In the Aftermath
by Solia
Summary: A sequel to 'Break Me Every Time' from a surviving Dexter's perspective, including a retell of Ch53 and the events that follow in the aftermath of Deb's desperate crime. Read the original fic for context. Rated M for coarse language typical of the show and some explicit content. Written for Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto.
1. Chapter 1

Title: For Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own _Dexter_ or any of its characters. I don't own EpiPen or accept any responsibility for the effects of their misuse. Please use according to the instructions provided on the packaging.

Author's notes: This fic is written in thanks for **Writingisfunlol** , who generously wrote countless in-depth reviews for _Break Me_ and has supported my progress with my original novel, and **PrestoManifesto** , who also found himself aboard the _Break Me_ bus and very kindly went on to read and review my novel. They both asked for a follow-up chapter for _Break Me Every Time_ in a possible universe in which Dexter has survived the epilogue. This is not a confirmation of that theory; this is just a fanfiction of that fanfiction, because nobody knows, least of all me, but after six months of wondering how he _might_ have pulled it off (because I killed him pretty dead and didn't leave myself much room to play with) this is what I've come up with. Read all 53 chapters of _Break Me Every Time_ if you want context.

Because this fic is dedicated to two people, I have written two chapters. Thankyou both so very much for your support and warm encouragement. I appreciate it and hope to death that you – and everyone else reading! – enjoy this.

Chapter one

/

/

Years pass and my body heals. But the scars remain. The aftermath of my ordeals.

I read about the people I left behind, and know their scars run as deep as mine, even if those scars aren't visible to anyone else. I know my son is haunted by what he saw the last time we were together. I know my sister is plagued with survivor's guilt and the weight of the darkness I left behind in her. I would have taken it with me if I could.

The intel is infrequent, sparse, objective – a school report; a one-line comment in an email from an anonymous source to say they've changed address; a chart stolen from the hospital; a memo from within Miami Metro Homicide, obtained who-knows-how, indicating that Angel Batista is retiring – but it's more than I deserve, and it's what I agreed to. I was dying and my future was empty. I took the deal.

I've kept up my end, mostly. I've stayed away. Mostly. I've stayed underground, gone where they told me to go, provided the information they wanted, lived the lives they wanted me to live and played the roles they require. Five years of service and eighteen new kills to my name, all of them sanctioned and all but offered up in a silver platter. It's easy to be quick about it when someone else is doing the vetting for you.

It's not the F.B.I., though they would like to me to think that's who they are. They're higher than that, with the ingenuity to follow the Bureau's cases closely, the foresight to recognise an asset when they see one and the power to make said asset disappear without a whisper of suspicion.

They keep me comfortable but they keep me on my toes. More than ever, I can't afford to be caught. If I am, it's entirely on me: the world will ask how this could possibly could have happened, but they won't take responsibility for me and there's no shred of proof that they have any connection with my survival. They won't save me a second time, and they have the ultimate double-edged leverage. The deal was easy to take – die, start over somewhere else, commit to their service, and the case against my sister fell away, right out from Agent Reid's hands. They say it was believable, the way the case crumbled and the way her name came out clean, that she'll never suspect a thing. The price of fucking up is she goes back under the bus they wrenched her out from.

Needless to say, I'm as meticulous as ever, though now I'm without _need_ , and now that I don't have a family to lie to, I make fewer mistakes. I can take my time. I make my own deadlines. I am an even more efficient killer than ever before.

Now I'm treading a very fine line, and I know the risk I'm taking. I'm back in Miami, the last place on Earth I should be. My minders don't know I'm here. They keep me apprised of my sister and children's notable movements to assure me they're still safe but they don't know there's someone else I monitor.

 _My brother was murdered_.

The email comes through to the address I had Lumen Pierce create before she left me. She never changed the password, and until now she's never used it, and neither have I, except to set up a forwarding system in case she ever logs into it. I get a notification to my own inbox that this account has a new message, and my breath catches as I read it. I don't know how my sister came to know the address but the four simple words she sent concern me more.

I immediately stand, ready to fly straight to her, and have to force myself to take stock on the situation and sit back down. I can't simply fly to her. I'm dead to her. I can never see her again, and she can never see me. All I can do is worry, which I do, extensively.

How can she possibly have come to that conclusion, years after my departure from her life? It was so delicately staged. The right coroner was paid off to declare me dead and sign off on false reports; the investigative team that flew in to support Reid was carefully selected to feed him misinformation as all trace of a conspiracy was carefully cleaned up. Even Quinn was manipulated into playing his part in maintaining the illusion. All for the good of everybody I ever knew.

I stew on it for days. It throws me off my game and twice I miss opportunities to take down my latest government-sanctioned target. I stay clear, maintaining my cover, knowing that closeness with Debra Morgan – even _thinking_ about her – dulls my other senses and leads inevitably to making mistakes.

I've almost convinced myself that the message is harmless, just an expression of Deb's healing process, and that my initial panic was mislaid, when, after three days, a reply sends me reeling back into my state of apprehension.

 _Can you wait for the weekend?_

Lumen. Who else could it be? Responding to Deb. Going _to_ Deb. And I can only imagine what my two former loves think they're going to get up to together with fresh new beliefs of my murder boiling away between them.

It escalates. Deb sends an address; Lumen asks to meet at my grave on Saturday. My _grave_. Because I'm _dead_. I can't sleep. My skin crawls and my stomach twists with the idea that Lumen and Deb are in contact, sharing in a belief that wrong befell me. Which it did, and the man who would have been my killer remains in my sister and son's lives, and I think on that every day, but Deb wasn't ever meant to know. Thomas Matthews' involvement was a puzzle piece best left out of the jigsaw. He's a dangerous player in the game of my existence, but he's one that serves a better purpose alive, protecting my family, than he does dead or incarcerated with the F.B.I. digging into why.

He tried to kill me but he'd never hurt my sister, I tell myself every day. She's Harry's little girl. The good one. He tried to kill me _for_ her, to protect her from me. His method sucked but his intentions weren't to be sneezed at.

I consider tipping Tom off that two vengeful women are after him, but beyond preventing Deb from committing a terrible crime and possibly saving his life I can't see what good that would do. It could get Deb in trouble. It could turn him against her. It could undo everything I have died for.

Lumen will ring her, I tell myself, and cancel, but she doesn't. She flies to Miami. One of the contacts my employers gave me for use on my projects readily provides me with a flight manifest from Minneapolis Airport, and I sit in anxious silence in my dark little house on Saturday night, just staring at the document. _Lumen Pierce. Miami to Minneapolis._ She's already returned.

What business did Deb and Lumen have that could be wrapped up in less than five hours? They can't, they _can't_ have gotten together to kill Matthews, could they? I love her, but I can't pretend to know Deb anymore. Or Lumen, for that matter. It's been so long since I saw either of them, and both were highly intelligent, highly motivated killers last I checked. Now they're mothers, fierce protectors of little lives, and I cannot fathom what new extents they would go to in their new incarnations.

I search the internet for news about Thomas Matthews. I prepare myself for the worst. A disappearance. A grisly murder scene. The arrest of an honoured detective. But there's nothing of the like. There's a statement about a case, made by Deputy Chief Matthews, posted by the media three hours ago. He appeared for this press opportunity _while_ Deb met Lumen. He's not dead.

Then what in hell were those two up to?

The curiosity burns inside me. The realisation that Deb has grown so much without me that I cannot predict her movements is frustrating and unsettling. I haven't experienced _need_ , the way I used to _need_ to kill, since she cured me of that illusion, but now I feel it again. I _need_ to know what she's up to. I _need_ to assure myself she's safe and staying out of the dark.

I tell myself it'll be alright. I won't let her see me. I won't let anyone see me. I'll drop in, check things out, and be out of there before anyone can know I'm there. I won't interfere. This will all turn out to be an overreaction.

I'm not allowed to fly. I have to stay away from airports, train stations and government buildings, lest my appearance is caught on camera. I drive. It takes me the whole of Sunday and most of the night, and I arrive on the outskirts of my home city early Monday morning.

I died on a Monday. I kissed Deb for the first time on a Monday.

I don't dare move out in broad daylight. I wait until the cover of darkness, and even then I wait for the evening traffic to die down. I wait for midnight. Then I drive to Elk Street to scope out the address Deb sent Lumen.

It's a shithole of a neighbourhood. The whole block is in a shambles, and a heavily-graffitied public notice hanging from one of the flimsy temporary fences declares that the street is condemned, scheduled for demolition in ten days' time. Like the rest of the houses, number 133 is a box, small and single-storey, with dark windows and dusty dead front lawns. No one lives here, at least not legally, and I can't help reflecting that it would be a perfect kill spot.

But that's what _I_ would use it for. What in hell would Deb and Lumen want with this place?

I park my car a street over, like I did the day I stormed Vogel's house – also a Monday – and head out to investigate. I check the neighbouring buildings first but find them in even worse disrepair than 133, and empty, as I expected.

I hear the slightest noise while I am poking about in the collapsed garden shed of 131 and freeze in the shadows. My excellent eyesight catches the motion of a figure stealing between the houses. I can't tell who it is in the dark, but he seems not to see me because he picks up his pace and strides towards the front porch of 133. I slide out of the shed's unstable skeleton and move to the fence line between the homes, where I remain sheltered by shadow.

An indistinct female voice utters an uncertain syllable somewhere nearby, and I duck deeper behind the rotting palings of the fence. I _cannot_ be caught.

"Debra."

I choke on my next breath and reflexively my hands tighten into fists around the stringy overgrown weeds that flourish against the fence I'm using as cover. Both the name and the voice echo out of a past I've tried to leave behind me. Debra. _Tom_.

What are they doing meeting out here in the dead of night? My heart thunders in my chest so loud I'm surprised they don't hear it, because I can't think of any good answer to my question.

"Fuck, Tom. You scared the fuck out of me."

The red queen in the perilous game of my life; my co-player and sometimes opponent, never more than a single square away on the same board. I'd know that voice anywhere, and the sound of it, even at this distance, even in these circumstances, brings an uncontrolled, shaky smile to my face. Nothing sounds more natural coming out my sister's mouth than 'fuck'. God, I've missed her.

"I didn't mean to frighten you," Matthews apologises. I shift slowly, trying to see them through the fence. Thomas Matthews comes into focus between two palings. It's dark but now I recognise his silhouette, tall and elegant with his excellent posture, and the moonlit glow of his white hair. "I thought about calling you but I think it's better we talk face-to-face, don't you?"

He's standing on the steps of 133, addressing someone standing on the porch, out of my line of sight. My heart leaps with equal parts anxiety and excitement at the knowledge that this must be Deb. A strong desire to leap from my hiding place and run to a better vantage point, to just _see_ her, is hard to ignore, but I manage. I have no right to look at her. I have no right to let her look at _me_. If she sees me, it'll all have been for nothing.

Now more than ever before, I _cannot_ be caught. Like when I was growing up, getting caught is a big no-no, but nothing can be worse than being caught by _her_.

"I don't want to talk to you. I can't believe you, Tom." It's Deb, alright, the very same stubborn, defiant Deb Morgan I disentangled from my life five years ago. I hear her in every word, the way pride and anger fuels the overconfidence she needs to speak to people the way she does. "Dexter? He was my _brother_ , and you killed him. How can I even look at you?"

Her voice fades to a crackly expression of hurt and grief and I thread my fingers more tightly into the grass to anchor me still. There's the proof I've been wanting all these years – she really does believe I'm dead, exactly as I was promised. But there's also the truth I had feared. She's worked out Tom's involvement.

She was always too smart for her own good. And now she's, what? Drawn him out here for a confrontation? I'm scared to realise I can't fathom her motives.

Matthews takes the gentle approach. "I know you're upset. I know you feel betrayed and you have every right, but I can explain everything." I'm listening closely and I'm sure I hear Deb scoff with disbelief. "Dexter was on a self-destructive path. He was going to destroy everything and everyone around him before long, including you. I did what I did to save you."

My hatred for Tom Matthews and what he did to me has long burned itself out, so I can begrudgingly see the sense in his words, and I accept that he honestly believes that this was what he was doing. Regardless of his intentions, though, it was his attack that enabled me to 'die' and therefore it is to him that I owe thanks for making this path I'm now on possible. In more ways than one, for me, he exists to protect Debra. Not that he knows that. I think any guilt he feels for his betrayal of me is adequate punishment; I certainly wouldn't want him to ever learn that he _helped_ me by putting my knife in my gut.

"No," Deb responds stubbornly. "No, you're lying. You've lied to me for so fucking long, Tom. You wanted to save yourself. Reid's on his way, and I'm going to tell him what you told me."

I tear my attention from Tom's silhouette to look self-consciously about. Agent Reid? Deb's pissed off, obviously, but she's got as much, if not more, to lose as Matthews does. She wouldn't really call the feds in to take care of this, would she?

Scarily, no, I'm quite sure she wouldn't. Which begs the question: _what the fuck is she doing out here with Matthews_?

"It's time to take some fucking responsibility for what you and Dad and Vogel did to my brother."

There's a long pause, and I squint at my father's old friend. I see the sharp edges of his shoulders lower in apparent defeat. "You're right. You're right," he says. He moves slightly, shuffles his foot about on the step. "I hurt you in doing this and I'm sorry for that. I should accept the consequences. I guess there's no getting around it now that you've told Agent Reid, anyway."

"I haven't told him yet. I just told him I have information, and he said for me to meet him here."

There's a silence and Matthews goes momentarily still, and I get a nasty chill. Why would Deb say that? She had all the power of the exchange and now she's gone ahead and shown him all her cards? She was smarter than that when I knew her.

Matthews looks at his watch and his voice drifts through the night to me. "He won't be far away, then. I'll cooperate. I owe you that much. Come on; let's wait by the car so he can see us when he arrives."

I have to watch for several seconds of silence before I see movement. Another tall figure, thinner again but this time intimately familiar, moves into view, takes the steps down past him. I don't even have a full second to acknowledge the flood of relieved contentment that fills me – the last time I saw my sister she was in critical condition in hospital, so to see her walking, straight and tall, is indescribable – before an indistinct motion of Tom's fires off alarm bells in my brain. _He's going for a gun!_

But Deb must notice, too. She's younger, sharper, too quick for him. She pivots on her feet towards him, grabs the gun with both hands and twists it upwards and then down. He loses balance and she takes him down with a swift and sharp uppercut with her elbow to his jaw.

In a panic I've jumped to my feet but I'm still hidden by the tall fence, which I press myself against, barely breathing as I look with one eye through my gap. I can't believe what I just witnessed. Deb is impressive in action, as always, but that's not what surprises me. _Tom Matthews_ , our family's friend since before my memories start, pulled a gun on _my sister_. Harry's daughter. And she had to defend herself.

He was going to hurt her. He was _willing_ to hurt her.

Matthews was meant to be one of the people looking _after_ her.

Deb doesn't behave like someone who was jumped. She doesn't run away or dial for help. She doesn't even pause to recover from her shock or check on her attacker. Instead she shoves the gun into the back of her jeans and grabs Tom under his arms. She drags him quickly back up the steps and into the house. Frowning, I move a few paces along the fence, closer to the gap Matthews used to get to her. The door of the house closes and I think I hear locks. A soft yellow light leaps to life in the windows.

I abandon my cover and run to number 133. I take the steps in two big strides and race across the porch to the big window. I'm horrified to find my vision of the indoors obscured by plastic sheeting. _Plastic_. Set out by whom? Deb, and probably Lumen, as a kill room for Matthews? Or by Matthews, as part of a plan for silencing Debra? I don't know which possibility scares me more.

This is not what I came back here to see.

Desperately I try to make out what's happening. Through the plastic, silhouetted by the artificial yellow light, I see my sister's figure pull Tom Matthews into the room. She stands over him and leans down; a spark is visible even through the plastic and the shape on the floor goes rigid like a plank. She's got a taser. She withdraws it only after a considerable shock has been delivered, and with effort lifts her victim onto a table in the centre of the room.

It's with shock that I realise I just mentally acknowledged Tom Matthews as Deb's victim, and it's with renewed desperation that I urgently look about for some way out of this. The window is one of the few in this street unbroken, and is freshly boarded up with large, wide planks of diagonally-placed wood to keep it that way. I yank on one to test it and find it firm. There's no getting in this way.

The glass and plastic muffle sound and I distinguish little of what is said. I think Matthews moans and begs; I think Deb responds without pity. It appears, from what vague motion I can make out, that she's started to wrap him in shrink wrap. I hurry to the door and try it, but it's locked, as expected. Not that I can do anything even if it's open, I remind myself with effort as I return helplessly to the window. Deb's alone in this, whatever fucked-up plan she's acting out. She can never know I was here.

She just has to race down this ill-advised path on her own and I can do nothing to prevent it.

That's so fucking frustrating, and I angrily bang a fist on one of the window boards. The boards are strong but the windowsill and walls are not, and the force reverberates through. Inside, a piece of tape that had been peeling, struggling to uphold its weight of plastic sheeting, takes this opportunity to come unstuck, and a portion of the plastic censoring my view falls away like a curtain. My vision of the horror within is immediately clear.

The deputy chief is lying on the table, shrink wrap over his lap, Deb leaning over him; one of his hands is in his jacket where his gun came from and his other hand is closing around her throat. My heart leaps into mine. She takes out his grip with a sharp knock his forearm, but I think she's underestimated the human will to survive. His hidden hand reappears and goes for her neck while the first retakes control of her by grasping the front of her shirt, twisting to keep her still.

He doesn't have a gun but the look of shocked pain that registers on my sister's face alerts me that it's hurting her. I immediately think M99, but that's what _I_ would think to use in this case. Deb tries to back away, but Matthews' grip on her is enough that she only succeeds in pulling him upright. The shift in position allows me to see what he's holding to her neck.

"Jesus," I breathe. I try again to wrench the planks from the window, to no avail, and I smack both of my hands on the wood, then between the boards to bang on the glass, helpless and terrified, just trying to create a distraction, _anything_ to redirect the series of events occurring inside. Matthews has used an adrenaline auto-injector on my epileptic sister.

And he _knows_ what effect that will have, which tells me he brought it here for this exact purpose.

Deb is struggling for her freedom but Tom won't allow it. I see the moment when she accepts she has no other choice, but outside, watching, _I_ can't accept it. She draws a knife from a makeshift holster at her thigh.

She thrusts it forwards. And twists.

" _Deb!_ " I shout in horror, clinging to the boards, all memory of the reasons for my previous silent distance long evaporated. " _Don't!_ "

I watch through the dirty glass as they disengage. Tom's limbs lose their strength as his shocked attention moves to his critical stomach wound, and the injector tears downward and drops. Deb cries out and shoves him away, ripping the knife free of him and brandishing it before her. Her free hand is over the injection point. Bright red blood runs over and between her fingers. He put it in the carotid artery, I realise as the blood maintains its flow, and that wasn't a slim little needle.

Horrific memories, still too fresh, too vivid, drive me from the window back to the door. I can't let this happen to her again. Already her face was draining of blood. If the adrenaline brings on a seizure and she loses consciousness, Matthews will have his opportunity to kill her. If she's lucky and he just walks away, she's sure to bleed out. I know what I promised myself, what I promised her without her ever even knowing, but I can't _not_ go to her. I can't leave her to this fate she created for herself.

I stupidly try the door again, yank on the handle, knock urgently, for all the good it will do.

"Fuck, fuck," I mutter desperately, knocking as hard as I can. "Fucking open the door!"

The people inside are indisposed, injured. They're not coming to let me in. I slam my body against the door a few times to test its strength but it's pretty solid. Deb chose her kill spot well. It's a fucking fortress.

I hear the voices inside. Deb curses. Tom yells, "Reid! We're in here! Morgan's the one, it's her!" Motherfucker, getting his word in first, still more worried about how all this will reflect on the people involved than he is about my family and our wellbeing. I dig in my pockets for my new lock pick kit and struggle with this annoying task in the dark. I'm quick when I can see what I'm doing and when my sister isn't in imminent mortal peril. Tonight every second drags agonisingly, and I hear snippets of angry conversation inside.

Fate must pity me because the lock suddenly and unexpectedly clicks, and I turn the handle at the same moment as I hear a shout of pain from within. I shove forwards, needing to be inside; the door only gives so far. Fucking chain lock. I chance a quick look in before my next move and almost wish I hadn't. Deb is on the floor, blood all down her neck, shoulder and arm, face deathly white, with her knife freshly pulled free of Tom's calf. Unsteady on his injured leg and dripping blood from his torn midsection, he furiously strikes her across the face with such force that she goes down and hits her head on the floor. I hear the _crack_ from where I am, but the sound that resonates in my ears is the sound of her short incoherent scream, which sounds like a cry for _me_. Sick, I move away and throw my entire weight at the door once more. The chain snaps and the door slams back against the inner wall. I could faint with relief at being able to step inside, where I can actually _do_ something.

But then it's even worse inside. Blood, plastic… More blood… More plastic. Deb, unconscious and twitching on the floor, dark hair sprawled around her head and blood pooling at her side. There's a moment of adjustment as I acknowledge that _this is my fucking life_ and I am not, in fact, dreaming this.

Tom Matthews is halfway to the door, right between me and my sister. He's standing, if you can call his awkward posture that, cradling his gutted stomach. He looks at me with the same look of shock I am sure I wear.

He's older than when I last saw him, but mostly looks the same as ever. Of us two, I'm the one who looks the most different. He takes in the changes. The beard. The scars. The longer hair. But I have lost interest in him.

My sister gasps for breaths between convulsions and one uncontrolled motion tosses her head back. I lean slightly aside to better see her, hyperaware of how broken and helpless she is in this moment. Is she dying? I've long forgotten that I am not meant to be near her; that I didn't come here to let her see me. She draws a gasping breath and her eyelids flutter beneath the messy, bloody strands of hair that lie across her face. Hope and fear leap inside me. "Deb…?" Because God knows I can't watch this again.

I hope I'm not imagining the slow relaxation I'm sure I see across her body, or the relative evenness of her next breaths or the smaller twitches. It's been only ninety seconds since the adrenaline was administered and this fit seems to be almost over.

I realise that my little sister is bleeding from an arterial wound and is experiencing a seizure right in front of me and I'm just _standing_ here in the doorway in dumb useless shock. I start forwards.

"You…" Matthews stutters as I approach. "You can't…" He's directly in the way and the blank dislike I've felt for him for years has been replaced with cold fury in these last few minutes, so it's nothing to knock him bodily aside. He lands with a loud crash on the plastic-covered floor. He's too amazed to protest. In disbelief he demands, " _Dexter?_ " as he starts to right himself. Over my shoulder I point at him threateningly.

"Don't you fucking move," I snarl. I'm angrier with myself than I am with him, though. Haven't I learnt my lesson by now about leaving dangerous people around my family? "Don't think I didn't just see what you did to my sister."

I go to Deb's floppy, twitchy form and crouch before her, terrified of what I'll find. Five years ago she took a bullet to the brain and I'm aware from medical files provided to me by my new employer that this has left her with minor brain damage, and more specifically, epilepsy. I saw her first seizure. It killed her. I remember with nightmarish clarity the strain in my muscles as I pumped on her chest to restart her heart, the warmth of the air I exhaled into her mouth to inflate her lungs, the brightness of the blood that ran out her nose from her injured brain.

That seizure was my fault, and it was only thanks to a miracle that she was brought back. I repaid Fate for that miracle by getting the fuck out of Debra's life. Is this fit any less my fault? She wouldn't be here tonight if she didn't believe me dead.

Well, she's not dead this time. I grasp Deb's upper arms and pull her into a sitting position against the wall. It's the first time I've touched her since I stole into her recovery room after her traumatic labour on my birthday four years ago. Her muscles, still toned and defined, are loose and soft under her clammy skin, and her head tips to the side, unable to support its own weight in this moment of weakness and, apparently, trying to look around for Matthews.

"Deb?" I try to shift into her range of vision to see her eyes. I have to brush her hair back off her face. It's damp with sweat at the roots and tacky with blood at the ends. I press my hand onto the wound on her neck automatically. I can feel the outward pressure of her pulse pumping it out against my skin but I still withdraw it to look at how much has left her. It's enough to be worried, so I put my hand back. I see her eyes, usually hazel but tonight black with oversized pupils, attempt to focus on my face. She's in a rough sort of way but maybe she's coming around. "Jesus, Deb. Are you alright? Can you hear me?"

I can't tell if she does. She stares at me with a gaze that struggles to focus. Her eyes rove very slowly across me, taking in my hair, my eyebrows, my eyes, my mouth, my short beard, even what I'm wearing. I get the distinct impression that she doesn't quite know what she's looking at. Her blank expression scares me almost as much as the seizure itself. Was she really robbed of so much oxygen just in that short fit that she's now left impaired and unable to recognise me? Have I come so far after so long only to find her two minutes too late?

" _Can you hear me_?" I demand, overriding the impulse to shake her only with difficulty. She blinks.

"I… I hear you," she manages eventually. Her speech is slurred, slow, an aftereffect of the chemical overload in her brain. I exhale heavily, relieved. She's still in there. We might still be able to salvage this night; if her injuries aren't so serious I can't have her on her way without the assistance of 911, that is. She's strong enough now to sit up unaided, so, keeping one hand on her bleeding neck I use the other to quickly assess the rest of her body. Her torso seems fine. There's no blood, no tear in her black clothing and when I gently probe her ribs for breaks she doesn't wince. Her limp arms lie awkwardly in her lap and I feel along them for broken bones. At her left wrist I pause as I recognise _my watch_ strapped on. She's wearing the watch I gave Harrison in the days before I left them. I delicately drop her hand back onto her lap, further unsettled to realise _she's wearing my gloves_. I don't know what to make of that.

I think it upsets me more than anything else. That she still misses me so much; that she's wearing _me_ here, tonight, and how that reinforces the concept that she came here with dark purpose.

I move my attention to her legs, recalling that she was down when I got in here – did Matthews injure her the way she then injured him? – and thinking I'm less likely to cause myself any further upset, but it's when my hand is on her knee that she freaks out. Muscles that were loose and limp moments before suddenly go taut and she recoils with a weak but unexpected burst of energy.

"Get away from me!" she shrieks, shoving at my chest. I back off and raise my hands helplessly, unsure. Did I hurt her? From the way she slides her legs closer to herself I can't determine any pain or injury there. She stares at me with wild eyes, all the sharpness and depth I am used to seeing there a distant shade in this moment. Blood runs again from her wound and she slaps a hand over it, pointing at me accusingly with the other. "Don't touch me! Stay away!" She stares at my hand, and down at the floor where her blood drips from my fingers. Her stricken expression tears at my heart. "What the fuck?" she demands, and I realise she's confused. Her overloaded brain mightn't recall the minutes leading up to the fit; maybe she just awoke to find herself bleeding on the floor of a kill room with no concept of how she got here. Her breathing comes faster. She's panicking. " _What the fuck?!_ "

I want to calm her down so I explain clearly, "You had a seizure."

I was worried about my Deb's clarity but her next words are so _her_. "I know I had a fucking seizure, you moron," she snaps at me, control of her mouth back. She remembers. She knows what she's doing here. She knows that a sentence isn't complete without ' _fuck_ '. "I'm talking about _you_. What the fuck?"

Her aggression sparks annoyance in me, the way it always did before.

"I could ask you the same," I retort. I look around and actually _look_ this time. If it wasn't so devastating it would be impressive. Deb has dotted every 'i', crossed every 't' of preparing for this kill. The room is perfect. The location is ideal. The takedown was beautifully executed. But _this is Deb_. The blood on the floor is half hers, and the victim is _Tom Matthews_. The knife – fuck me – it's _mine_ , the one I used to torture and murder Evelyn Vogel and which Tom used to gut me in front of my son. Where _the fuck_ did Deb get that?! I gesture uselessly at our horror-film surroundings. "What is this? What were you thinking?"

My sister stares back at me with the same degree of incredulity that I offer her. Behind me I'm vaguely aware of Matthews watching us, but he's not moving so I can ignore him for now.

"What was _I_ thinking?" Deb repeats, disbelieving. "This was _your_ idea!"

I had hope for her mental state but now my blood runs cold. " _My_ idea?" How could she interpret this as _my_ idea? I haven't _seen_ her in more than four fucking years! She hasn't seen _me_ in five! She thought I was dead!

But I'm made forcibly aware by my sense of memory that when I killed Vogel, my traumatised mind let me put responsibility for those decisions onto the ghost of Debra, and I wonder fleetingly whether Deb's mind has done the same for her.

No. I won't believe that. This has all been a mistake, all of it. She's not haunted. She must just mean this is what I would have done.

And she'd be right.

"I never wanted this for you. I left you so you could escape all this." I gesture again at the room. I can't believe she'd create this; I can't believe _she would believe_ I would have encouraged this. "I told you to let it all go. You were never meant to know. You can't _kill_ someone."

"You _told_ me to kill him," she snaps back at me with conviction, and I see it in her eyes. Her pupils have shrunk down to a controlled size and she's regained her focus, and I see _him_ slinking in their depths.

He won her. I left and the darkness seduced her.

She's gone.

"You came here with me," Deb reminds me irritably, confirming the fear. She's host to a dark passenger so powerful her mind gives it form. _My form_. Her darkness manifested itself as hallucinations of _me_ and she allowed it to convince her to carry out this terrible plan. It must have been as believable as Deb's ghost was for me in the hours I thought I'd lost her. The disbelief in her expression betrays that even now, she's utterly taken with her mind's cruel illusions. She thinks _I_ am one of them. How fully it has seduced her. I wonder if she at least struggled with it; I wonder if she fought it for control and tried to fend it off with morality and reason.

I don't suppose it matters. Whatever weapons of light she wielded she lost, and she's here regardless.

And so am I. Maybe I can drag her back.

"I came here to stop you," I say firmly, trying to win her back with facts. "I saw him pull his gun on you and I saw you take him down." There's a smear of her blood on her forehead and automatically I reach out to rub it away, but she shies away and I pull back to avoid scaring her. "I tried to get in here in time to stop you but you'd already started reacting to the adrenaline."

My version of events conflicts with what she believed and she frowns. I become aware of just how _long_ it's been since I last saw her. She's older. There are faint lines around the edges of her eyes that I know weren't there before, but five years and two unexpected children will do that to you. In her hairline I can see the whitish blemish that is her bullet scar from Vogel's unlucky shot. I'm sure that under her clothes she is different again, scarred from the events of that last fortnight we spent together, when years of mistakes and horrors fell upon us and she took the brunt of it all for me and nearly paid with her life.

"What are you?" she asks me, curiously. In my head I hear the echo of her words. _What are_ you _, Deb_? In my last hours as Dexter Morgan I accepted a truth I'd been avoiding – that Deb was a killer, too – but in my memories of her, in my every daily thought of her, I've managed to omit that fact. I resumed picturing her the way I wanted to see her. This harsh reminder is a slap in the face.

"How?" Matthews asks, panting beside the table. "How did you survive?" I look to him but won't answer that. Our father's friend pulls himself up using the plastic-coated table that was meant to be the place he died. "How are you here?"

Deb's frown deepens and she demands of him, "You can see him?" Then she demands of me, "How can he see you?" There's a pause, and then her breath catches in realisation and tears spring to her eyes. Is she coming out of her delirium? Is that entirely positive? "Are you real? You can't be real."

I don't know what to say. I shouldn't even be in here. I shouldn't have interfered. But if I'd stayed outside, I'd now be watching Matthews shuffling awkwardly out the door with his phone connected to the station, and Deb would be dead. No course of action that allowed my sister to die could possibly have been the right one. But now I'm faced with a difficult situation. If Deb accepts I'm real then she also accepts I've lied to her and hidden from her all this time, and I break her heart for the umpteenth time. If she doesn't accept it, she remains in her hallucination and her darkness wins another round. Can I send her home to her family like this?

Tom Matthews is uncomfortably pulling himself upright with the help of the table.

"We can discuss it at the station," he says. He looks god-awful, pale and spilling blood everywhere. He'll bleed out before Deb does.

When he gets into an independent standing position Deb panics. She lurches clumsily forward and grasps for the knife beside us. I quickly stop her, pulling it away, and she whips her hand away from me, apparently still confronted by physical contact. Matthews notices and limps hurriedly for the front door, spotting his opportunity for escape. Deb struggles to get to her feet, to go after him. Many of her muscles won't respond in coordinated efforts but she comes close. Terrified of her making good on her plan, I reach across her and pin her to the wall by her shoulders. She strains against me.

"I can't let him get away," she pleads. "He'll report me. I'll be arrested!" She looks directly into my eyes, into my soul, and the urgency of her appeal is communicated in the unrestrained dread I see in her. A sob hitches in her throat and for the first time _she_ touches _me_. Her hands wrap around my forearms desperately. "Stop looking at me like I'm such a fucking _disappointment_ and _help_ me!"

I can't refuse her. How can she still play me so well, years out of practice as she should be? How does she still know that word would win me over? Of course I can't let Matthews report this; of course I can't let Deb go to prison. Reluctantly I release her and go after Matthews. He's at the door but he's slow with injury and I'm there in only a few steps. I sling an arm over his shoulder and across his chest and yank him backwards. I kick the door shut to keep the noise in and throw Matthews back towards my sister. He lands heavily on the floor and rolls through the blood. Now I have to think what we'll do with him to keep this under wraps.

Deb doesn't think. She snatches up the knife and I'm not fast enough to stop her.

"Deb, no!" I exclaim, launching myself at her. She brings it down at Tom's chest. My hands close over her wrists and I mean to pull upwards, to stop this before she finishes her most epic mistake, but either I don't or I don't pull hard enough because then the blade sinks deep between the deputy chief's ribs and blood spurts over Deb's hands and mine.

It's hot and sticky. Fresh. Messy.

Didn't I dream of this for weeks? Didn't I desire this with a dark passion that was almost sexual? Wasn't it sexy and satisfying when I killed Vogel _just like this_ with Deb's ghost?

In life, in this moment of ultra-realism, of desperation and horrific reunion, it is neither.

I _have_ pulled on Deb's hands and now the knife, _my_ knife, comes sliding out of Matthews' chest with a sickening sucking sound. Deb releases it immediately and it clatters to the floor. I let her go; _who the fuck is she_?! My handprints are on her wrists, and I know it's symbolic. This is as much my responsibility as hers. My prints are on every terrible thing she does.

What did I create?

What did I _break_?

Thomas Matthews can't draw a full breath. His eyes are wide with shock and death starts to draw him away.

"I should've… should've known…" he stutters. "Morgans… You're… you're as… bad as… each other…"

He was our dad's best friend. He was the one who called me at school when Harry died. He was the one who hugged Deb and I when we arrived at the house that night, me in my sleeping shorts and she in a slinky sparkly party dress with glitter paint all up her arms. And he dies. _At my sister's hand_. We look up at each other and I can see in her face that she's having as much trouble recognising me as I'm having in recognising her.

There's no glitter this time. I wonder if she'd be easier to recognise if she was wearing glitter.

"What have you done?" I whisper. It's rhetorical – I saw what she did, but I'm unable to reconcile the facts with what I thought I knew. Isn't she my baby sister? Isn't she the cleanest cop in Miami? Isn't she Harrison's idol? Isn't she Quinn's love, and a little girl's doting mother? But I can't ignore that she planned this. She was the game master here, not one of the pieces. She had Lumen help her set this room up. She lured Thomas Matthews out here in the middle of the night and she came here prepared with a taser and my knife. She wore my gloves and my watch. This was all painfully deliberate.

I don't know whether there's any going back from this.

"I had to, Dex," Deb tries to explain, beginning to calm down just as I start to fall victim to panic. "He was going to ruin everything-"

"What, and you didn't just do that yourself?" I demand, voice and temper rising. "This isn't _you_. Look at what you just did! I saw what he just did to you but you're the one who drew him out here in the first place. What the hell for, Deb?"

She returns to the defensive Debra I grew up knowing how to argue with. "For _your_ kid, Dexter." I blink; no one's addressed me by that name since I left Miami. "For _our_ kids. Matthews was meddling, trying to create another _you_ in Harrison." She shakes head, appealing to me to understand. "I couldn't let that go. I had to stop him."

I feel like she's punched me in the stomach. Harrison? I thought he was safe with her, safe with Quinn. I didn't count on Matthews' insidiousness poisoning my son's existence.

I hang my head, ashamed with myself. I left my family with wolves. I left Deb alone to defend them, armed only with knowledge she couldn't share and weapons I now berate her for using. This wasn't just about mislaid revenge. This was about family. What does Deb know about protecting her family but what she learned from me?

I now understand the desperation I felt in her as I held her down and Tom made his attempted escape. I understand the premeditation. I understand the reckless swiftness with which she went for the knife and brought it down on our old friend.

My son's future was on the line. I draw a slow breath. Isn't this why I left my child with her? Didn't I always know there was no length my sister would not go to for my son? Isn't that why I refused to let Hannah take him, even when she had Deb at knifepoint?

"I didn't know," I tell her honestly. "I thought you were all safe."

"Are you real?" Deb asks softly, her delirium cracking. She clings to what shreds of sanity she can find in herself; she claws at reason and logic wherever she finds it. "Who are you?"

"Who are _you_?" is all I can ask in reply. Who are _we_ , that after five years of painful separation _this_ is our reunion? Blood, death and plastic? We both look around us and take in what we've done. Rather, what she's done, but what I've inspired in her.

"That's my third," she murmurs. Her third murder. My little sister the murderer. This isn't where she should be. This isn't the scene I should have found her in.

"You should go," I mutter, trying to shift my frame of mind from 'panicked big brother' to 'professional assassin' and thinking through how best to manage this catastrophe. She's set the room up well. I can clean this place up easily enough. The body… I suppose I can deal with that, too. "Get your neck looked at. I'll take care of all this."

Her eyes widen in anxiousness. "No, I'm staying. I started this and I'm going to finish it."

Stubborn to the fucking last. I sigh. "Deb-"

"This is my fucking mess."

"And you can't clean it up on your own."

"So are you going to help me?"

She's quick as ever and she knows exactly where my heart is, so no strike ever goes awry. I offer her a helpless look. I can't help her. I wasn't meant to come here at all! I squeeze my eyes shut against the impossibility of my predicament. Deb is a killer and she wants my help covering up a brutal murder. This is _not_ like La Guerta's death, which was a split-second choice that could then not be taken back. This is _bad_. Matthews' death will be thoroughly investigated and I'm not around to deflect the line of fire like I was last time. I'm _dead_. I'm not meant to be here. I wish I _wasn't_ here. Even more I wish _she_ wasn't here, and that the events of the last ten minutes had never happened.

But they did, and we're here, in the aftermath, and she's still my sister and the love of my life.

"Of course I'll fucking help you," I murmur finally. "I'd never let anything happen to you; you know that." I open my eyes and I'm looking straight into hers. She's older and so am I and she's changed and so have I, but now that I look I recognise her as completely as I would have five years ago when I left her life. She's _my sister_. Chubby-cheeked babbling baby Debra with my hand in her mouth. Pigtailed stubborn little Deb in the back of her mom's car on the first day of school. Angry angsty teen Deb locking herself in my car with me. Shattered and shocked Lieutenant Debra Morgan lowering her gun in the church when I asked her to, when she should have arrested me. Whatever she does, whatever she becomes, however long I turn away, when I turn back this one fact won't have changed, and neither will the fact that I love her like the Earth loves the sun. "Do you still have my boat?"

"I still have a key."

"Does anyone know you're here? Did anyone see you?" I press. This has to be _perfect_. I did not live five years without her and my children so I could read about her jail sentence in the paper.

"No. I covered my tracks."

"Jesus, Debra." I have to look away from her, recognising as much of myself in her as I see of her. Have we traded bodies? Is she me now, as I have struggled against my nature to become her? "Alright. We've got to do this fast." I stand and offer her my hand. "Come on. I'll show you."

She looks at my hand for so long. I see the hesitation in her face, and I watch as sanity and Brian Moser chase each other behind her eyes. It was a slippery slope for her before and now with the brain injury I see it's even worse. She's delicate, shaky, but not in the way people may expect. She's not sure she wants to touch me. She's afraid of confirming to herself that I'm really here – that I've hidden from her and left her alone in this world willingly, which I suspect I won't be readily forgiven for – and equally afraid of finding me to be another shade of her hallucinations. Deb likes control. That she might have lost her mind must be as frightening for her as it is for me.

She makes her decision and firmly accepts my hand. I see realisation fill her eyes and I know our problems have just started.

"Tonight's the night, Debra."


	2. Chapter 2

Title: For Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own _Dexter_ or any of its characters, nor do I own any rights to the songs I draw inspiration from and refer to in my A/N. Owning songs is for rich and talented musos.

Author's notes: Alright, fine: it's a sequel. Dexter survived _Break Me_ and returned to save Deb. I didn't want to know the truth but the effort and thought that's gone into this piece has confirmed it for me. You guys were right. Dexter lives.

But then that leaves the Morgans, and us, in a much stickier predicament than if Deb was just imagining him. Now Dexter needs to explain himself, Deb needs to come to terms with his abandonment and what this might mean for her future, and there's still a brutal crime to be cleaned up.

Also, fine: it's not two chapters, it's three. _Obviously_. Don't you guys know me by now?

Both **Writingisfunlol** and **PrestoManifesto** , the reader/writers to whom this fic is dedicated, are talented _Dexter_ fandom writers themselves, and I strongly recommend to anyone reading here that you go forth and read their work, too. **PrestoManifesto** is developing a prequel novella about Harry Morgan in the years before he found Dexter. It's sharp and well-written, with heaps of shout-outs to the canon. **Writingisfunlol** has a collection of short Debster-tone pieces, and aside from being a versatile and talented storyteller across multiple mediums, she also happens to be one of coolest people I have yet found on the internet. Thank you to you both for your support of my work, but also for the friendship I have found with you.

Song for this fic is _All of Me_ by John Legend. So soft, classic and sad, but then those lyrics are absolutely perfect for the tragic Break Me Debster: _What would I do without your smart mouth?/ Drawing me in and you kicking me out?/ Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down/ What's going on in that beautiful mind?... My head's underwater but I'm breathing fine/ You're crazy and I'm out of my mind/ Coz all of me loves all of you… I give you all of me/ And you give me all of you… You're my downfall, you're my muse/ My worst distraction…_

/

/

I pull her to her feet. She stumbles a bit, legs weak from the physical trauma her body went through in the seizure, but gets her footing and stays steady once she's up. She looks at me and only at me. There's a fuzzy, daydreamy reverence in her wide gaze, a childish innocence I associate readily with her, but also a steely determination that I remember with much sharper clarity. She's overwhelmed, blown away by the reality of what she's just done and by my unexpected appearance, but equally she's prepared to deal with it in any way I ask of her.

I've lied to her for five years, and a lifetime before that, and she hates me for it, but some things will never change. She'd follow me anywhere I led.

How depressing.

I'm the big sibling, and that makes me in charge. I look around and confirm my first course of action. Matthews is very dead. The room is very well-dressed and will come down cleanly. The neighbourhood is deathly quiet, empty. There's nothing more urgent than the puncture wound in the side of Deb's neck. She has one hand clamped over it and the pressure is helping, but there's blood all over her neck, her chest, her shoulder, down her arm, flowing between her fingers and smeared up as high as her ear and cheek.

I gesture with a slight jerk of my chin and she understands; she tilts her head and removes her hand so I can look properly. As I saw before but didn't have the time to closely examine, the needle of the auto-injector is thicker than your average hypodermic and has torn a visible hole in her skin. It's tiny, as far as holes in the neck go, but the bleed is heavy enough to be concerned.

"Does it need stitches?" Deb asks, and I glance at her. Is that a veiled joke, a reference to another Monday's injury? But she isn't smiling. I shrug one shoulder and brush her long hair out of my way with my free hand. She's tightly holding the other, the one that pulled her up. It feels good to feel her hand in mine after so long without touching her. It feels right, while everything else in my vicinity is so damn wrong.

"No hospitals," I say. If we can help it, we need to avoid any record she even left the house. I gently touch her throat, pressing the skin lightly to pull it taut so I can see the size of the hole. She lets me. "I think I can deal with it."

She glares over my shoulder at the auto-injector on the floor beside the table. "Weaponised fucking medication," she complains. Darkly, she adds, "and I fucking _gave_ it to him. So fucking _stupid_."

She sounds like her old self again, though I can't be sure that's who I've got. I don't know why she'd give Matthews an EpiPen but it sounds ill-advised in retrospect. I put her hand back on the wound.

"No more stupid than luring him out here in the first place armed with a taser and a stolen knife that can be traced back to previous crimes," I comment coolly, accepting the hard look I get in return. "Where's your goddamn sidearm?"

"You told me not to bring it. That it could only make things worse."

For every step we make forwards, for everything she says that lets me think she's fine, there's a big step back where I'm reminded she's actually at least half-insane.

Holy hell, my sister is half-insane.

"I've got a first aid kit in my car," I tell her. "I'll be right back."

"No, I'll come with you," she insists, hand tightening on mine and eyes hardening. "What if you don't come back? What if I wake up?"

"You can't leave," I disagree. "Not while you're dripping evidence everywhere." I wait for this to make sense to her. She was reasonable once; well, no, she wasn't, not by my reckoning, but she'd have understood this. "I'll be right back. You won't wake up - you're already awake. Will you be alright here for one minute?"

She swallows and nods. "I've survived five years, haven't I?" And she lets me pull my hand from hers.

I feel heavy as I turn away, swallowing the 'I didn't want to!' and the 'It was for your own good!' that rise in my mouth. _I've survived five years, haven't I_? Just shoot me in the heart, why don't you, Deb? But honestly, I didn't think I'd get away with it. I've never entertained the thought of revealing myself to her and returning to her life, because as surely as I know she has loved me more completely than anyone, I know she will never forgive me for what I've done in abandoning her.

Even, or especially, if it was the right thing to do.

I leave and run to my car, parked a street over. I wrench open the passenger door and dig through the glove box, very aware that I'm leaving stains of Deb's and Tom's blood all over my possessions but unable to feel any concern over that right now. I'm not going to be a suspect in this disappearance. No one's going to search _my_ car looking for traces of the missing deputy chief.

But there _will_ be an investigation into my sister. She's a close associate, professionally and personally, and as far as the F.B.I. is concerned she only narrowly twisted out of a serial murder case five years ago. Her brother was the Bay Harbour Butcher, Dexter Moser. There can't be anything linking her to what she's done to Tom, not even a fibre at the scene, or it'll be only too easy for them to pin her for it.

I return with the first aid kit, keeping a cautious eye out for unusual activity in the surrounding houses. Nothing. There's nobody around. She chose this spot well.

God, Deb's _good_ at this.

I let myself back into number 133 and pause when I find the spot I left her in empty. Thomas Matthews, lifelong friend and attempted murderer of us both, is dead on the floor, gutted and knifed in the heart, but where I found Deb there is only a smeared pool of blood and from where I pulled her to her feet there is a steady blood trail, leading… I step further inside, cautious, and move to see around the corner into the front room where Deb had planned to execute Matthews in the same way Brian Moser once tried to kill her.

I've been out of the profession since I left Miami but blood is my language and I can still read it fluently. I can't see her but I know where she is, hiding behind the small segment of wall that separates the main entryway from the front room.

"Deb, I'm back," I say softly, on edge. I assume she hid in case the next person who walked in was not me, but I can't be sure. She's my sister but she's also someone new that I can't predict.

There's a small rustle of plastic and Debra steps out, Matthews' gun levelled at me.

I should have taken that before I left. I am definitely out of practice in dealing with little sisters.

"It's just me," I remind her gently, raising my red hands with the medical supplies I've brought for her. She doesn't lower the gun. I start to feel uncertain again. "Deb. It's _me_."

"I'm not so sure," she says coldly. " _He_ would say that, too."

 _He_. I assume _he_ is the other me, the me she hallucinates in her darkest moments, the me who convinced her to come here tonight and premeditate this gigantic fucked-up murder conspiracy plan. _He_ twists and manipulates her, forces her to come to conclusions she mightn't have come to without the help. Right now, she's either falling further into her delirium or she's clawing her way out of it and coming to terms with my return. I can't expect that to be easy – she believed me dead, and I'm sure the regression of grief that is to come will be quite awful, when she's stable enough to go there – but I feel impatient with her regardless. She's got both hands on the gun, and the blood's running from her neck again. I need to treat her.

"I'm me," I insist. "I'm here, really here. Look," I add, drawing her attention to my foot as I trace my shoe through the blood and smear it. A ghost wouldn't be able to do that. I meet her eyes again. "I've got cotton pads and medical tape-"

"Don't you fucking even," she snarls as I step toward her. I freeze when she tightens her grip on the gun and raises it in line with my forehead. She doesn't trust me. She doesn't trust I'm _me_. "You mightn't even be real, so you just stay the fuck back."

"I _am_ real!" I exclaim, annoyed. "I was _just here_! I was here, I was here when you stabbed Matthews. I was holding your fucking _hands_ , Debra. I've got your blood all over me, _look_ ," and I wave them at her, palms red. She blinks, not sure. "You've got my handprints on your wrists. I'm me, I'm here. You don't believe me?" I can't help the incredulous laugh that escapes me as she bites her lip, confused. Déjà vu. Haven't I had this conversation before? With my own hallucination, of her? Didn't her ghost get mad when I accused her of not being real, the same way I'm getting mad at her now for the same belief? She and I have lived together through some screwy times but this is so sad it's ridiculous. We don't deserve this night. We've both suffered enough in our time to repay my life's crimes threefold. "Are you going to shoot me to find out if I can bleed, too?"

"It's an idea," Deb confesses shakily. "This could all be some fucked-up nightmare for all I know."

I really don't know if she's bluffing. Five years ago I would have walked right up to the gun until the barrel tip pressed into the skin of my temple, and I wouldn't have feared her pulling the trigger. Tonight I just don't know.

That's the most frustrating thing ever.

"Put the gun down." I am firm.

"No." So is she. Shaky, but firm.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I spit in irritation, and her lip wobbles. "I'm here to _help_ you and you're going to _shoot_ me? Fine." I square my jaw. "Go ahead. You'll confirm something for both of us."

It's a risk, giving her permission, but I'm relying on my optimistic belief that she's still my Deb underneath the haze of mental illness and chemical imbalance. The panic that rises in her expression confirms it – she doesn't want to shoot me.

She's almost crying as she whispers, "I don't know who you are. I don't know what's happening."

I could say the same, but I don't. As patiently and kindly as I can, I answer, "I'm your brother."

She chokes on an angry sob and exclaims, haltingly, "How am I-I supposed t-to know that's the fu-fucking truth?"

I realise I can't get through to her with words. Deb and I are not talkers. Our love was always a sitting-on-the-couch-watching-bad-TV, drinking-beers, loaded-looks kind of relationship. We didn't need many words. The reason I knew she loved me was the way she stood up to James Doakes when he insulted me; the way her feet drew against mine when she backed up to me during a fight with our father when she was fifteen; the way she fired a bullet into Captain La Guerta to protect me. Actions speak louder than words, and I am not winning her over with words.

I take a chance on her. She's worth it. I throw the first aid kit behind her. Distracted, she watches it fly. I move forward quickly, praying her uncertainty wins out over her fast reactions. I borrow her move from before. I grab the gun with both hands and twist the barrel upwards in case it goes off; simultaneously I pull the butt towards me. The weapon slips free of her bloody hands and she's yanked forward, surprised. Already I am bringing my elbow up as she did but I don't strike her. I catch her across the chest with my forearm and push, twisting the collar of her shirt in my fingers to optimise my control, driving her back into the room as I get a grip on the gun in my left hand.

Deb is almost exactly my height so her eyes burn straight into mine as I force her back the three or four steps until she bumps into the table. I don't relent; I lean into her even as she bends uncomfortably back. She pulls on my wrist but I have the dominant position, over her. I show her the gun.

I am out of practice in dealing with little sisters but not in turning tables on victims, and Deb was always one of mine.

Looking down at her, I find I haven't hated myself this much since I left her. This is why I left. I can't love her without overpowering her. But how else can I prove to her it's really me unless she can see the lengths I'd go to in order to look after her? Doesn't she know I always know what's best for her?

Or that I'd run her off the edge of the world trying to hold her down long enough to apologise when it turns out I don't?

"Feel familiar yet?" I ask in a low voice. Slowly, so I know she won't shove away, I release her clothing and withdraw the pressure I'm exerting on her breastbone. She doesn't move except to breathe heavily.

"Are you going to shoot _me_?" she asks. We break eye contact to look at the gun in my left hand. I look back at her in disgust. If she has to ask that, perhaps I'm wasting my time after all. Maybe she's lost it.

"Only if you don't hold still," I threaten. It's a useless threat. She's not afraid. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. This is the furthest thing from my ideal reunion. I reopen my eyes and she's still there, pinned between my body and the table she meant to use for this kill. She's real. I never thought I'd be this close to her again, let alone able to speak with her. I need to get a grip and stop being the asshole she's been mourning. She's extremely delicate. I'm the big sibling. I should act like it. Deliberately calm, I disarm and dismantle the weapon in front of her and cast its components behind me. I backtrack. "No. I am not going to shoot you. I'm going to patch up this mess you call a neck. May I?"

It feels weird to ask Deb for permission for anything. I drop my arm and wait.

Her answer is silence, though she does lower her hands to the tabletop behind her hips and lift herself onto its edge. I take that as yes.

I fetch the first aid kit and I work on her without speaking. She doesn't speak, either, but she does turn her head to watch me whenever my hands leave her neck. I get the wound covered first and then attempt to clean her up. There's more blood here than what I can deal with armed only with a pocket pack of tissues.

"We'll burn these clothes," I comment, thinking aloud. There's too much blood soaked into the fabrics – washing them is no guarantee of removing the evidence that will tie her to this crime.

This crime she _committed_.

But which I'd never let her be found guilty for, because I'm a sucker and I'd throw my whole fragile arrangement with my shadowy employer away before I let Deb accept the natural consequences of her own ill-considered actions.

I pack away the medical kit. She's not bleeding anymore and her wound is covered, but I can't take her anywhere until the blood on her is dried enough that I can trust her not to _drip_ all over the place. There can be no trail from here.

"You're sure no one knows you're here?" I check. She looks up at me and shakes her head.

"There's no trace, Dex," she promises, and I'm slightly lifted out of the deep robotic misery I have felt since I first touched her tonight. She hasn't spoken since she asked if I was going to shoot her, and she's not crying now. I like the sound of my name in her voice. "No calls, no emails, no proof I was ever here unless I'm caught in the act." She has to look away. "The kids are asleep and I drugged Joey. He'll be out until morning. Pretty Hannah fucking McKay of me, right?"

 _The kids_. Now I have to look away, look busy. My heart aches with missing. Harrison, my son, is _her_ child now. And she's got her own one. A little girl. I suppose she'd be four now. I have no idea what she looks like, whether she's started school, what games she likes to play – unlike Deb, and Harrison, and Astor, and Cody, I've deliberately avoided learning anything about Deb's baby. I figure if I was to know anything about her the universe wouldn't have so obviously positioned us in such opposing parts of Deb's life. Past: Dexter. Future: baby.

I saw her once. When Deb had her. I received a one-line text to my phone – _Dt. Morgan hospital labour critical will advise_ – and even though the _will advise_ part was clearly intended to assure me that I would be kept in the loop provided I kept my neck out of it, I couldn't stay away. Like this time, I drove all night. It was a risk. I always take risks on her. But I had to know I wasn't doing what I was doing for nothing – that Deb was alright, that she had survived.

I found the neonatal ward first. Saw the tiny baby girl with IV tubes and bandages and heart monitors and a ventilator helping to keep her alive. Saw the oversized tag on her ankle that said _Morgan_. Saw baby Debra's round eyes and tuft of dark hair.

Saw my niece, for the first and only time, and loved her before Deb ever did, before Deb ever saw her, and knew wholly that staying away was the best thing I could ever have done for my sister.

"Do you have bags?" I ask, forcing myself back to the present. Deb glances into a corner and I see her small pile of supplies. She's much too good at this. Or perhaps she's not. Perhaps she just knows too well how to find the kind of people she needs to help her, like Lumen. I inhale slowly. "Alright. Here's what's going to happen. We can't move the body as it is. I need to take it apart." She nods. I watch her cautiously. I think she still thinks she's dreaming. She's way too okay with everything. "I'm going to put it into the garbage bags and pack the plastic into the bags, too. When we leave we'll wrap plastic around our shoes before we take even one step onto the floorboards, okay? _Don't_ step on the floorboards."

" _Don't_ step on the floorboards," Deb repeats in semi-sarcastic acknowledgement. "Fine. What do you want me to do?"

"I want…" I have to stop. She wants to help me. My head swims. "Just stay there."

"No, I can help-" she insists, pushing herself off the tabletop, but I grab her shoulders and push her firmly back onto it.

"No," I state forcefully. "You can't. You stay where you are."

"Dexter-"

"Debra." My voice is a warning. "If I have to watch you help me cut up a body – _our dad's best friend_ – I'm going to be violently sick. So stay the fuck back, alright?"

She stays the fuck back. I don't look back at her as I deftly hack Matthews into pieces with the few tools she has available, but I know she's watching. I wish she wouldn't. When I stand to retrieve the garbage bags, I am satisfied to note that she's distinctly green.

Good. That'll teach her.

I pack the body away but I let her help me take down the room. I'm hyperaware of time. She needs to be clean and back in her bed at her place before Joey Quinn's alarm goes off at dawn. I need to be back on the road before the sun comes up.

As she stuffs plastic sheeting into the bag beside me I feel grateful that she – or her hallucination of me, which is still really her, I guess – thought to wear my gloves. There won't be a print of hers anywhere near this crime, and if I ensure her blood disappears with the body, and if she's telling the truth about her carefulness in her stalking of this prey, and _if_ she wakes up beside her partner in the morning and he can verify she was there all along, I think that's enough to be sure she's safe.

We wrap our feet in plastic before we step onto the rotten floors of this old house. I make Deb tuck her hair under the collar of her shirt. What's she thinking, committing a crime with her long hair loose and drifting all over the place? I'm sure I wrapped at least three strands of hers up inside the bags. Three strands that could have connected her to this crime if I hadn't turned up and agreed to help.

We heft the bags over our shoulders and slip out into the night, kicking the free standing lamp out of the wall socket to put out the light so we don't leave any prints. I lead my sister to my car and we load Matthews and the kill room, all compacted down into just a few plastic garbage bags, into the trunk.

"We'll come back later for your car, and his," I tell her, opening the passenger door for her. I've got a strip of plastic lining each seat so we don't spread evidence. It looks sterile and suspicious. She hates me; she isn't even sure I'm real; she just watched me hack a lifelong friend into bloody pieces; she was in love with me and I left her with a wreck of a life; she pulled a gun on me tonight and I violently disarmed her. She hasn't seen me in half a decade and I could have any intentions. But Deb doesn't hesitate. She climbs straight into the car and I close the door behind her. I get in behind the wheel and start the car. Neither of us speaks as I drive away with my lights low; I turn them up when we reach more populated neighbourhoods.

"Where are we going?" she asks idly after fifteen minutes. I'm taking her along the outskirts of the city, vaguely towards my old apartment but steering clear of main roads or nice, law-abiding neighbourhoods. Instead we drive through ghettos and industrial areas. Places my beat-up car and the hour of our misadventure won't seem out of place.

At an old power station I pull up and get out of the car. There's no one around, no sound but the _hum_ of electricity moving through the generators inside. Deb leans silently across the seats to watch me as I tug my bloodied shirt off over my head and slide my now-stained trousers down and off as well. I stand in the cool night air in only my underwear and pile my clothes up with the plastic I was using for shoes.

It seems hugely dishonourable to tell my sister to do the same, to strip for me here in the dark, outside, in some strange place, but she has to, so instead of saying it aloud I catch her gaze and gesture with a jerk of my head. She shuffles across the seats obediently and steps softly out of my car.

"We have to burn the clothes," I explain, and she nods. She crosses her arms to take hold of the hem of her tight black top and tugs it up. She never had any shame. Her head pops out, hair everywhere, and she peels the sleeves down. She's right in front of me so I take the shirt in my hands and pull, helping her to free her arms. One sleeve catches on my watch, Harrison's watch, but comes off with a second tug. She kicks off her shoes, plastic and all, and unzips her jeans. I keep my eyes cast down, thinking it's probably too late to offer any sort of privacy, but she dips back into my view as she bends to push the legs of her denims over her calves and ankles, and when she straightens, so do I.

I know it's weird to be looking at my sister's near-naked body in the middle of the night, but it's no weirder than that same sister to be looking at mine. A lot I recognise – she's still skinny, tall, all long limbs and protruding bones, with excellent muscle tone and tight tanned skin over all that. But there are some new features. Features I hadn't counted on, but should have factored in whenever I've thought of her.

Scars. The aftermath of _her_ ordeals.

I spotted the bullet hole in her hairline already but now my attention is drawn to the white line under her ribs. It's ugly, blindingly white against otherwise smooth and consistent skin. I know there are more on her back. A horrific reminder to the wrong person that I was an idiot who played dangerous games with the lives of the people I loved. The scar shouldn't be on Deb. It should be on me.

In some ways it is. Her gaze drifts across me in my bared state and sticks to my abdomen where I have a scar to mirror hers. She doesn't share my sense of boundary and as she hugs her incriminating jeans to herself she extends the other hand to lay gloved and tacky fingertips on my scar. The injury she thought had killed me. The lie.

The scar, the injury, the lie she committed murder for tonight.

I take that hand and gently pull the glove off. I know she'll object to burning those so I post it through the window of my car. She catches my hand in hers, now bare and ungloved, and turns mine so the palm faces upwards. I love that her hands are clean under the leather. I love the concept that the blood, my influence, _my_ glove, all of this nightmare can be slipped off with relative ease, leaving her clean and pure and still _Deb_ underneath.

Please let it all be so simple.

Deb finds the curved pale scar of the teacup I smashed on my first attempt to kill Vogel. How much of our miserable history could have been avoided if I'd just done that fateful deed right then, that day? If I'd just ignored Deb's call, pushed my conscience aside for another thirty seconds? I was more than capable. There would have been plenty of time to make it up to an angry Deb. Maybe I'd still be in her life. Maybe I'd still be a dad to my three kids. Maybe I'd be an uncle to my niece.

"You're real," Deb breathes, tracing the scar and looking up at me with a shine in her hazel eyes. "How _the fuck_ are you real?"

Her tone doesn't make it clear whether she's pleased or infuriated by this realisation. I imagine she feels both. But I'm mildly relieved to know we're both standing in the same real world.

I lay her hand back on my body, this time over the long old scar she should recognise. I got it impaling myself on a fencepost trying to fetch her ball when we were kids. _Not_ a lie. A truth. That I've bled for her, would again, and that's what I'm doing here against all better judgement. "I'm real," I agree. "I'm here."

She stares at me as I reach back through the open door of my car for the box of matches in the well of my handbrake. Can't stress enough how useful it is to have these on-hand in emergencies. I strip the plastic from the seats as well.

"But you're leaving," she states hollowly. "Again. Already."

"I told you I'm going to help you clear this up. I meant it."

"You know I mean after that."

"Deb," I sigh, tossing her jeans and the plastic onto the pile of our clothes.

"But I just got you back!"

"I'm not _back_ ," I respond. "I'm just… here. And I shouldn't be, but I am, just for now, alright?"

She shakes her head. "No. Not fucking alright."

"Everybody thinks I'm dead," I explain reasonably.

"So do I. How can you be here and already leaving?"

I'm not ready for this. I dance around it. "This, tonight? It's not happening. When we're done, you have to forget about it. Pretend this didn't happen. No one can ever know I was here because then everything else comes out. I can't just move in with you and stay on your couch, Deb. It's not like old times."

She's silent. Fuming. I light several matches and throw them down on the plastic, which catches easily. Slowly, the drying clothing ignites, too, and then it all burns. I move closer to the shed housing the power station and find a faucet at knee-height, presumably for an absent hose. I turn it on and wash my hands in its cold stream. I push the water up my arms and, shuddering, onto my chest and face to remove any stray smears or specks of Deb or Tom's blood.

"I don't want to pretend. I'm fucking _over_ pretending."

I pause, frigid water in my cupped hands, and glance back at my sister, standing where I left her. Furious with me. Hurt. I used the wrong word. But it's the only word.

"I wish you didn't have to," I answer, because that's all I've got for her. I pretended for so long so she wouldn't need to. Once she knew the truth I was hiding, her turn at pretending began. "But it's not for me. You have other people to pretend for."

She doesn't get an option, sadly. Like me growing up with a little sister to keep deftly blindfolded, she's got two kids – _our_ two kids – to protect against the horrors of the world. Horrors like 'Your father pretended to die so you could have a better life, but he's actually been in hiding all this time and made no attempt to contact us' or 'Your aunt/mother committed murder last night and helped her supposedly dead serial killer brother dispose of the body'. She doesn't have a choice. They're her responsibility the same way she was mine. I failed her; she can't fail them. She's meant to be the better of us.

I don't hear her approach. "It is for you." Deb's hand, though cool from the night air, feels shockingly warm against the back of my neck and shoulder when she wipes blood off my skin. I look back at her. "Pretending was always for you."

I don't know what to say. I lower my gaze and go back to rinsing her blood off me.

She cups her hands under the cold water, too, and splashes it onto her body. The shock of temperature makes her gasp and step back; the water that reaches her drips off in eerie moonlit crystals of pink, tinged with blood and backlit by our little fire.

She doesn't like it, but it makes her cleaner, so she's going to have to put up with it. I take her arm and pull her back to the tap. Reluctantly she kneels on the cement, recognising the logic, and goes about washing herself.

Is this sexy or morbid? I don't know. I don't know I know the difference with her.

My hands shake, half from cold and half from the burden of ethical dilemma. If it felt wrong to make her take her clothes off, it feels even worse to wash her, but she's got so much more blood on her than I had on me, and that cut in her neck bled as much down her back as it did down her front. I crouch beside her and make a cup out of my hands to gather water to spill over her shoulder. She shivers as it strikes her skin and runs down her back; she tenses further when I scrub at the dried blood trail with my fingers. Then my fingers don't come away.

Raised whitish scars read like braille under my fingertips. They're horror stories. I revisit the chapter about a glass cabinet shot to pieces in Evelyn Vogel's upstairs hallway, about a sister thought stolen and murdered who appeared in time to save her revenge-driven brother from Oliver Saxon, about a split-second decision to shove her brother at a wall and to shield him with her body as bullets fired and glass shattered all over her, cutting her deep. I run my fingers down to the plot twist near the end of the narrative, the chapter where Hannah McKay drugged the stupid brother and bound him, rendering him powerless when she gained the upper hand over the sister who had come running, again, to save him, and drove a kitchen knife into her back three times.

I shouldn't be touching her, but I'm transfixed by the memories carved into my sister's skin. She trembles, ignoring my wandering touch and concentrating on washing her face. I know I shouldn't but we're already alone, out in the dark, sopping wet and almost naked after having shared responsibility for a gruesome murder, so boundaries are hard to grasp. I trail my fingers from the scar at her kidney down to her hip, where I feel the faint satiny creases of stretch marks from her pregnancy. The epilogue – I only skimmed those chapters. I know she didn't carry full-term. I remember how Rita looked pregnant with Harrison and wonder how big Deb got. From there I drift upwards to the story's paramount tragedy and press my hand across the mark Hannah made in her stomach.

Deb gives up pretending not to notice my attention. She turns towards me, eyes bright in the dark, filled with too many complex emotions to name. I take a long moment to meet them with mine. For a while I'm trapped in that story, in that moment when the brother got free and the sister ripped the knife from her own body to take out Hannah, to protect her brother and nephew at her own expense even as her brother screamed at her not to, when she fell forward and her brother had to catch her and press his hand to her wound to keep her blood inside her. Like this, like the way my hand covers the scar now. But now the wetness that streams over my fingers is icy and clear, just water, and her wound is closed, long healed over. I've revisited this story a thousand times in nightmares but reading it on her takes me back with sharper clarity than my imagination can ever provide.

I finally do look up at her. Her breaths are deep and slow, constrained with nervous energy. I raise my other hand to her face, to hold her wet hair aside to see the white scar in her hairline. Vogel's bullet. Hannah's knife. Saxon's hallway attack. But all of it my fault. Deb was the hero in my story, and I let her become _this_. I let her take these scars. I let her become a killer. I let her lose her mind.

I'm devastated.

She's shaking in my arms. The intensity between us is overwhelming. I'd forgotten about this, her draw on me. The reason I couldn't just walk away from her – when I left, it was at a run with no glances back. She's full-on even when she's doing nothing more than just looking me in the eye. All or nothing. I could kiss her, we're so close, but she makes no move to initiate and I don't know whether she'd reciprocate or strangle me for trying. Selfishly I'm pulled to her, body and heart, but with the same certainty I know she's _my sister_ and this desire isn't right, that I shouldn't have kissed her even once, let alone now, and that I don't deserve to even if I desperately might want to. The internal debate wars inside me and in the seconds of indecision my eyes fall from hers to her mouth. Her breath quickens; I hear it. I move my hand from her hair to her lips. I feel for the proof of life. Her exhalations are warm on my cold fingers. CO2 direct from my sister's lungs, pumped all through her body by her heart in blood that isn't mine but might as well have been.

It's wrong but I want that CO2 in _my_ lungs.

Reluctantly I drop my hands and sit back, out of reach. I shouldn't be touching her. I have no right. But we don't have all night, and I can't take her any further still covered in blood. I certainly can't drop her at her home like this. So I hold the stained ends of her hair under the stream of water and rinse the blood out, and rub a mark from her chin. She drops her gaze from mine and won't make eye contact. I wonder if she's disappointed or relieved.

I leave Deb standing in the dark, shivering and drenched in her underwear, but _clean_ , and I dig about in the back of my car. I've always got a few changes of clothes for emergencies, shoved into a small duffel bag tucked behind my seat. Dull shirts, conventional coats, unexciting shoes. No labels, nothing at all distinctive. The wardrobe of someone hiding in plain sight.

I find Deb something to wear and she hurriedly pulls the oversized clothes on. I get dressed, too. They're my own clothes so they fit me perfectly but Deb can't take a step without my trousers sliding from her narrow hips down to her knees. I don't have a belt. I don't even have a rope. But she can't walk around holding her clothes on. I end up cutting the seatbelt from the middle of the backseat of my car for her. She's going to need her hands for what we've still got to do.

Our fire burns out and I gather the charred remains of our clothes into another garbage bag. I toss it into the trunk with what's left of Matthews and the kill room while Deb gets back into the car. I grab some rocks, some broken bricks, anything that's heavy and won't be missed.

Nearly done, but not quite.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: For Writingisfunlol and PrestoManifesto

Fandom: Dexter

Rating: M for language and explicit content

Disclaimer: I do not own _Dexter_ or any of its characters. I don't own Band-Aid. I wouldn't try to take credit for Band-Aid's fantastic work, saving the world one ouchie at a time. What kind of person do you think I am?

Author's notes: Last instalment! As usual it spun wildly out of control word count wise, but I don't think anyone is surprised. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and especially those who have commented so far. I'm back to being unsure whether this is a sequel or an AU, because I actually really liked the ambiguity of _Break Me_ 's ending, but I really enjoyed writing the raw and untempered versions of Deb and Dexter I got to uncover through this fic. Thankyou **Writingisfunlol** and **PrestoManifesto** for prompting me to write it. All readers, please read and enjoy and remember that I live off your praise, and please decide for yourself whether or not this is canon to _Break Me_.

Writing to bridges at the moment. Still writing to _All of Me_ by John Legend but mostly captured by the opening verse and the bridge. _And you give me all of you/ Give me all of you/ Cards on the table, we're both showing hearts/ Risking it all though it's hard…_ Too perfect for Debster. I hear it and my mind comes straight to the Dexter universe. But as usual I'm also writing to my favourite musical inspiration, Matchbox Twenty. _The Difference_ has never much spoken to me before now but it is very fitting for this chapter in particular. The lift in pace at the end of each verse into and through the chorus fits the rise and fall of Dexter and Deb's confrontation, and the lyrics make pictures of them in my head: _Slow dancing on the boulevard/ In the quiet moments while the city's still dark… There was nothing but her love and affection/ She was crazy for you/ Now she's part of something that you lost… Now she's moving further from you/ There was nothing that could make it easy on you/ Every step you take reminds you that she's walking wrong/ And for all you know/ This could be/ The difference between what you need/ And what you want_. And then this bridge is so potent! _Every word you never said/ Echoes down your empty hallway/ And everything that was your world/ Just came down_.

Chapter three

/

/

I don't need directions. I drive her out to my old place. Her old place. Our old place. The apartment. I turn my lights off as I get closer and drop my speed, taking this moment to respectfully acknowledge the harsh pang of nostalgia and horror I feel in my chest at the sight of my old home.

Where I lived.

Where I hid.

Where I fielded a one-sided game against my long-lost brother.

Where I looked after my sister when she was fearful and traumatised by her experience with the Ice Truck Killer.

Where I raised my son.

Where I heard my son's terrified screams for me as Hannah tore my family apart.

Where I watched my knife sink into Deb's flesh, and her blood pour over my carpets.

Where a bullet shattered a window and struck Deb in the temple.

Where I was so sure I'd lost everything.

"Astor lives here now," Deb whispers as I pull to a stop. Just like that. All that happened here to me is extinct, just like that. It's Astor Bennett's place now. And she's happy here, I hope, and so all that came before that doesn't matter anymore. I don't live here; I don't hide here. My brother is dead. Hannah is dead. My children are safe. My sister is alive, and here, and probably insane, but alive is alive. And my home is no longer my home.

And I'm glad.

We're stealthy about unpacking the trunk and carting Matthews' bags up to the marina. It's so much quicker with Deb than it ever was on my own. I often considered that she'd be the perfect partner in crime, and she is. Sick, I know.

 _The Slice of Life_. It's exactly how I remember it, and it's not until I set foot on its deck I realise how much I've missed it.

"I gave it to Cody," Deb says softly. And again, I'm glad. My eldest son has upgraded some of the equipment and has kept the rest in perfect condition. Enrolling him in sailing club all those years ago was clearly a good call.

Deb has the key but she hands it over. I kick away from the wharf and let the boat drift for a bit before I start the engines; and even then I keep the power low until we're out of earshot of the apartments. I anxiously watch the dark window on the second storey. No lights come on and I'm relieved. It's bad enough that I revealed myself to my sister. I shouldn't have interfered, let her see me. But I did. I can't shatter my daughter the same way.

Though, presumably, my daughter would never put herself in the extreme kind of situation I had to rescue Debra from earlier this morning.

Deb sits at the back of the boat with one arm wrapped around herself against the cold ocean air and the other hooked through the handrail for support. I glance back at her occasionally as I take the _Slice of Life_ further and further out into the dark. She hasn't really said much, I realise. She's acknowledged that I'm real and that's about it. She hasn't asked how I survived; she hasn't asked how I could bring myself to avoid her for five years and let her believe I'd died. I'm not looking forward to that conversation, because when Deb hits she hits hard, but the fact that we haven't yet had it worries me. Deb isn't one to shy away from challenge, so she's not _scared_.

It makes me worry again that she's not entirely the Deb I left behind. That she's different; damaged. That the bullet she took and the seizures she experiences now might be linked to the kind of mild brain damage her doctor predicted back at the time of the shooting. I've seen those scans, read those notes. My employer made sure I had access to them. When she passed a psychological evaluation and went back to work I assumed it meant she was fine.

Now I think I was too happy to jump to conclusions, and doctors' notes about _impaired judgement_ and _issues with empathy_ and _impulsive decision-making_ come reluctantly back to mind.

Did my little sister lose her mind? While I was racing as far from her as I could get to protect her from every outside evil I could imagine, was she falling victim to the one evil I forgot to factor in – the one inside?

Did I leave my sister to devour herself in madness? Or… had she already started down this path when I knew her?

I angrily slam the boat to a halt, and both Deb and I jerk forward at the change of speed. I don't mean for my anger to affect her. I'm just so _pissed off_ at the prospect that my greatest sacrifice, costing myself _her_ and _Harrison_ and _Rita's kids_ , might have ultimately not helped at all. That maybe Deb was never within the reach of help. That the damage I'd already inflicted was enough that she never stood a chance of real recovery.

I growl in frustration and kick the protective wall of the steering column. There's nobody around – even the shoreline is distant and dim from here – and it's dark and I'm alone except for the dismembered body of Thomas Matthews and the very still, now standing figure of Deb, who mightn't really be Deb at all. Momentarily I lower my head to rest on my forearms, which I stretch across the steering wheel.

I shouldn't be here.

She shouldn't be here.

 _We_ shouldn't be here.

Jesus, Deb, why'd you have to send that email? Why couldn't you leave this all alone? Why couldn't you find some other way? Why'd you have to lure me out here the same way you lured Tom and why did you have to ask me whether I'd help you clear everything up? Now I'm questioning myself, questioning my choices, and I don't like it.

It makes me not like her very much right now. I never love her any less, but I don't always like her.

Regardless of whether I like her I still fucking love her and I'm still committed to removing this stain from her life so she can carry on from here as if she never made tonight's mistakes, so she can go back to being Joey Quinn's girlfriend and Harrison's idolised aunt and one little girl's beloved mommy. I pull myself together and push away from the wheel. I turn back to Deb and she's standing there at the back of my boat – my son's boat – where I left her, watching me.

"We're far enough out," I say. "The current's good here."

We're nearly half an hour out from the marina. Deb hasn't spoken since we first set foot on the deck. Even now she silently walks to the side and looks over the edge into the black water as it placidly laps the sides of the boat. The quiet water is nothing like the stormy grey seas of my last trip out on this boat, the night I drowned Jacob Elway. I nearly lost my boat. I nearly died. Even still, I'd take that night again over this one. At least that one, if relived, could maybe be rearranged to result in different consequences. Maybe I would waste less time playing with my prey. Maybe I would make for home quicker, call Deb, meet her in Orlando with Harrison and forget about trying to remove Hannah from my life, forget about trying to salvage my Miami life at all. In the end that wasn't even what I wanted. Maybe–

Maybe I should give up dreaming new endings that aren't to be and deal with the nightmare ending I created for myself instead, because I _am_ here and _she's_ here and everything is totally _screwed_ but it'll be worse if we don't get rid of this corpse we – _she_ – created.

I grab the heaviest of the bags and carry it over to where Deb stands. She looks at it. She looks at me. She looks, for the first time tonight, like she actually understands the gravity of the situation, and I hope that means she can handle a bit more weight.

"If this is ever found, you're fucked," I warn her. "You bled all over him, all over the scene. There's no reasonable explanation for that except for your presence at the murder. If anyone finds _any one_ of these bags, it's a nail in your coffin, Deb."

"Do you think someone will find them?" she asks, sounding nervous. _Good_. She _should_ be nervous. She killed a fucking deputy chief of the police force. Being nervous is a normal response. Panic would be better, but nervousness will do for now.

"Doubtful," I admit. I lower the bag to my feet, lean on the edge and point to the horizon. Almost imperceptibly, Deb leans closer to me to see along the line of my sight. I describe the path this current takes. "It's fast, too," I add. "It'll have these little packages out of Miami before you have breakfast. The weights will keep them down at the sea floor."

"And that's deep, right?"

"Very deep."

Deb exhales anxiously and looks out over the water. The soft breeze catches the ends of her damp hair and her white hands clench on the side of the _Slice of Life_. She looks… vulnerable. When I pulled her upright after her seizure earlier this morning she looked vulnerable. Since then she's looked anything but. She's looked manic, uncertain, angry, determined, lots of things, but not like this. Afraid. Worried.

That she's afraid is good. Fear is instinctual. That she's worried is even better. Worry is for the future. For consequences. _Impulsive decision-making_. You don't worry if you aren't pausing to consider your actions. Maybe she's not lost.

Or maybe she was when I found her, and maybe she's found her breadcrumbs and is slowly trekking back.

"It's a risk but it's still the best way, isn't it?" she checks, looking down at me as I untie the first bag and chuck in a couple of broken bricks from the power station. I look up at her. _Impaired judgement_. She's weighing up options. Seeking expert advice. Evaluating. Making informed decisions. Another good sign.

Relying on me, her unreliable dead liar of a brother, for confirmation of the best option. Hmm. Not such a positive sign.

But not unlike my Deb, so, with that in mind, definitely a good sign.

"It's the best way," I agree. "It's the cleanest way to remove the evidence from the reach of the people who are going to be looking for it – Miami Metro, and the F.B.I., I assume, but even they'll start with Miami and work outwards from there. There's nothing linking this to you, nothing that warrants opening a murder case over a missing person investigation. They'll probably never find the body. But if they _do-_ "

"I'm fucked," Deb finishes. I nod and lift the bag as I stand, and I tip it over the edge. We both watch as it lands with a _plop_ and then a _splash_ in the black water, and we feel the gentle rock of those little disturbances on the water surface against the boat. The bag instantly disappears.

We both return to the pile for another bag. We untie the tops and weigh them down with rocks and bricks. I leave her at this task and continue carrying completed and weighted bags to the side to throw over. I look back at Deb and she's kneeling beside her latest bag, looking in.

I can tell from the expression on her face that it's the bag with Tom's head in it. The stricken, disgusted expression is right out of my memory – so _her_ , so Deb – and for a moment I'm so contented to see it. Then I remember that what it took to bring Deb's _Deb_ expressions out was seeing the decapitated face of her murder victim in a plastic garbage bag on the back of her dead brother's boat in the middle of the night after drugging her partner and leaving her children unattended at home, and I'm not contented anymore.

I'm furious. Furious that she would throw away all that made her good. She was _everything_ I ever wanted to be, and now she's everything I ever was. All the worst things. The antihero.

This can't be real.

I stride over and take the top of the bag. I toss in the bricks with less care than our father's friend probably deserved, and Deb stands hurriedly, wincing as they audibly strike Matthews' skull. I hope she didn't see that.

I tie the top with taut and strong arms. I know I'm scaring her. I know I'm undermining the progress we've made. I can't make myself stop. I can't slow down and look at her and act calmly to make her understand that I'm going to make everything as right as I can.

"What a fucking night. What a fucking _mess_ ," Deb says faintly. Like it upsets her. Like she's waking up to herself, coming out of the shock she's been in since I found her. Like she's not sure what she's doing here. She looks around and shivers and I start to suspect that this is the case. But maybe she should have thought of all that before she planned this terrible crime and baited her oldest friend out in the night to murder him, inadvertently ripping me back to her and forcing me back into her life.

I wasn't meant to come back. I'd accepted I would never see her again. And that might have been better than _this_ , helping her cover up a crime I never wanted to see her commit and struggling to reconnect with her in these most extreme and unwelcome of circumstances.

"Need I remind you, this is _your_ mess we're cleaning up," I remind her, irritated.

She's back. She's just as quick as ever.

"You don't need to remind me, fuckface."

"And need I mention that-"

"No, you don't," she cuts me off. "I am aware that this situation is entirely _fucked_. But it was _my_ fucked situation and you threw yourself in and made it even more fucked than it already was. After everything in the last few years, and especially these last few days, I did _not_ need you to return from the dead and turn everything I believed upside down, tonight of all fucking nights, _Dexter_."

She talks in that condescending, spiteful way she perfected a long time ago. She says the things I least want to hear and makes me question myself. Years of separation and we're still at this? Sniping at each other, rubbing each other the wrong way. Siblings to the end.

" _I_ did not need to come back here and find you tying Thomas fucking Matthews to a table in plastic and stabbing him in the gut, with a dose of adrenaline in your neck, blood everywhere and a paralytic fucking _seizure_ on the horizon," I shoot angrily at her. "You're right to call it a mess."

"We wouldn't fucking _be_ here cleaning it up if _you_ had taken care of it properly before you fucking _left me_ ," she snaps back. She thrusts the next bag at me with a sharp glare in her ever-familiar eyes. The sharpness would be relieving if I wasn't so angry. She's very present; she knows what's going on, enough to be pissed with me. So she isn't _insane_ , thank fuck. I don't know what to do with an irreparable Deb. Broken, yes, I've dealt with that before. Cracked, hurting, lost, dark… I've seen and loved many incarnations of Deb, but deranged, delirious murderess Debra – I don't know how to manage that, for either of us.

Knowing she's not _that_ should improve my mood but her words grate on my rawest emotional wounds. They redirect my attention to my choices. She always could bring out the worst in me. Does this mean I've been a better person, all these years without her?

I can't believe that, but maybe.

I throw the bag she gave me overboard and turn back to her.

"Alright," I snarl, losing my patience and hating myself for it. Five years apart and this is my reunion with the love of my life? I shrug, raising my hands in faux submission. Really it's a challenge and she doesn't need a pocket phrasebook to translate. She knows. She straightens, tenses, ready for the punch. "Okay, let's have it. We've been playing for hours, avoiding it. Just say it. Come out and fucking _say it_ , Debra. Tell me I shouldn't have left you. Tell me I should have stayed."

Her gaze is steady and hateful. Our love has been this for so long, a love so deep it is also hate.

"You should have stayed. With me."

Why don't you just punch me in the heart, Deb?

I can hit just as hard.

"Would you be happier if I had?"

"What do you think, fucknugget?"

"Would you be _happier_?" I repeat, and she glares back evenly. "What's your daughter's name?"

That throws her. "Justice. Justice Rita."

I didn't know the middle name. I pretend like it doesn't throw _me_. "If I'd stayed," I barge on savagely, "you wouldn't have your daughter. You'd be in jail. We both would. Everything we ever did wrong would be public record and our friends and family would _despise_ you. You'd be the detective who killed her captain, harboured Hannah McKay and covered for her murderer brother. Harrison wouldn't be with you and neither would Quinn. So tell me," I challenge, ducking my head to catch her gaze when she tries to drop it, "how much happier you'd be if I'd stayed."

She can't.

"Tell me they don't make you happy, _every day_."

She can't.

"Tell me those kids and Quinn haven't made you happier than I ever did. Hmm?" I circle her and push her shoulder in challenge when she can't respond. She swats at me with an angry hand but misses. I walk around her and hiss in her ear, "Lie to me and say you'd have me back over what you have at home with them. Say you'd trade _in an instant_."

She shakes with equal parts frustration and hurt. A selfish part of me wants her to argue, to say I did make her happy. To say what she used to say, that it was worth it, that she would choose what we had over anything else. But I know, and now, finally, so does she. I never deserved her. And she never deserved me.

Harry Morgan should never have brought me home.

She shakes her head and looks away with a humourless laugh.

"You're a fucking asshole," she mutters.

"I haven't changed."

"I hate you," she adds, acidly. I nod wearily, turning away from her.

"I know." I lean my elbows on the safety rail and lower my head again to rest on my forearms. "I don't expect you to forgive me."

"Five years." Her voice is rising, but we're so far away from anyone or anything, there's no chance of being overheard. This whole night, bar Matthews, we've been totally alone. Isolated. It's like the world turned its back on us to give us this night in privacy. Like we're the only people in the world. But that only means if she wants to throw me overboard she can do so without interference. "Five years," she repeats, bright incredulous eyes on me. I keep my eyes on the decking of the boat as she rants. "Five fucking _years_. You were dead. I buried you. I cried-" She stops. Swallows furiously. "I cried forever."

I can imagine. I _have_ imagined. I never pretended I wasn't hurting her in leaving her like I did; I only convinced myself I was hurting her less this way.

"I didn't mean to hurt you-"

"Fine fucking job," she snaps. "Do you have the faintest fucking _clue_ how it feels to see you standing here with me after all this time and to realise I cried all those tears for _nothing_? To know you've been _alive_ and that you didn't even _once_ reach out to let me know, you selfish sack of shit? I'm _your sister_ ," Deb reminds me harshly. "This is one of those ball-shattering secrets you're supposed to _let me fucking know_!"

"Why, so we could have this delightful conversation even sooner?" I demand, using anger as a defence for my helplessness. She's wrong – it's not that I should have told her earlier, it's that I shouldn't have told her at all. Now look at us.

"Why the fuck not? How could it possibly have gone down any worse than the last two hours?!"

I growl in frustration and glare across the dark grey sea. She's right, damn her. No conceivable reunion could be worse than this one. I really screwed this up, and I'm not making it any better.

I try not to imagine a Mufasa-like apparition of our father bearing down on us from the clouds to scowl and berate me for my gross mistreatment of this situation and for letting my sister and I stray into this unfortunate future. It's all so easy to envision. He'd be so beyond pissed off.

"Things might have gone down much better," I say finally, tone tight, "if I'd not make contact with you at all. But that would have meant standing at the window and watching you die, which wasn't really an option, you know?"

"How could you stay away all this time?" she asks, mystified and shattered. _Didn't you miss me? Didn't you want to come back to me?_ She doesn't remember trying to leave me. She doesn't remember the resolve of knowing you were doing the right thing by everyone involved. She doesn't remember because I didn't let her stay away.

"Because I love you," I say, knowing it sounds weak. "Because it was right."

She explodes. "You're a fucking _liar_ , Dexter Morgan! You said, you _said_ you'd always choose me, you'd never let anything happen to me, and then you fucking _left_! And all this time I thought you'd left by accident, that you were _taken_ from me, from _us_ , from Harrison and Astor and Cody, but you _weren't_. You _left us_. By _choice_." She draws an angry breath. This is definitely Deb, my Deb. Whoever I've been dealing with up until now has been some disassociated, shell-shocked, post-traumatic-stress recovery model of Deb's mind, and I feel bad for the way I've treated that fragile version of my sister. I feel bad for not recognising her in trauma. I feel bad for not believing she was still in there. "I had _nobody_. Nobody who could _see_ me, who I could be _me_ with. I've been in fucking _hiding_ in my own fucking body for the last five years, you piece of shit. Lying to everybody. I did fucked-up shit with you, Dexter," she reminds me furiously, "I covered up all kinds of horrible things, killed people for you, I fucking _kissed_ you in a fucking _toilet_ at your kid's goddamn birthday party, and _no one knows_ , they all think I'm so _delicate_ and _innocent_ and some kind of fucking _victim_ , like I didn't know about anything, like I wasn't desperately in love with you and wilfully involved in every stupid motherfucking thing you were up to, like I wouldn't do it all over again if you asked because I'm hopeless and stupid like that, and you have no fucking _idea_ what it's like to miss you like I did. _No_ idea. You're so fucking _selfish_ ," she screams, lashing out suddenly. She violently shoves me and, leaning lightly on the rail, I go down hard on the decking. I curl up instinctively and she bears down, still shouting. "I _hate_ you. I _hate you_!"

"Deb!" I yell back at her, gamely raising my hands, catching her foot and pushing it away when she tries to kick me. "Don't! Just… Stop!" She pauses and I scoot quickly away into a sitting position against the captain's chair. "We've been here before. It doesn't end well."

Some other Monday. A beach, a big fight, harsh words of truth and deep emotion and regret. A spiral of events that got us both killed. A cycle more powerful than either of us. One we can't afford to restart.

"Maybe not for you," Deb sneers, but she does fold her arms and settles back on her heels. "Pretty sure I won that round."

I don't argue, though I'm sure I have grounds to. Arguing is what we do but it never helps. I helplessly scrub at my eyes with the heels of my hands. There has to be a better solution for us. I'm still the eldest sibling. It doesn't matter I've been away for five years and she's grown and I've grown and she's a mother now and I'm someone totally new. I'm still her big brother and any mess we find ourselves in is still my responsibility to fix.

Even if the mess is Deb herself.

"Alright," I say vaguely, thinking. "Alright, let's just get through this. Let's take a breather."

" _This_ is bullshit," Deb says staunchly. "I don't even know what _this_ is. You, here? Matthews in the fucking sea, in pieces? Where the fuck do we start?"

She's right. The mess extends much further than the confines of _Deb_. I'm responsible for the majority of what constitutes this disaster, and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding this unhappy Morgan family reunion. We have five years of bitterness, resentment and grief to air out between us. It was never going to be pretty, and I never had a game plan for approaching it because I never intended to meet her again.

"Let's…" I exhale slowly, trying to gather my thoughts. "Let's take turns. Let's start with… You have epilepsy. Tell me."

I don't know why that's the first thing that jumps to mind but it's something I do want to know more about, and it feels like a safe point to retreat to while we regain our strength to take on the bigger issues between us.

She's surprised by my retreat but accepts it. "Yeah. Side-effect of Vogel's fucking marksmanship."

"But you manage it? Mostly?" Not that I should be asking, because the more I know about her daily life the worse I feel about not being part of it and for shattering it like I have tonight, but now that I've brought it up I need to know that the brain injury she sustained because of me and my mistakes isn't too seriously ruining her life.

"Mostly. I don't tend to stick myself too frequently with Justice's fucking EpiPens-"

" _Justice_ 's EpiPens?" I interrupt. My niece is anaphylactic? How severe is her allergy, and what's it to? Matthews had one of the auto-injectors – is her risk of reaction so severe that even someone she's only infrequently alone with needs the life-saving medication?

"Hey," Deb warns, "you said to take it in turns. You had your question. So, where the fuck have you been?"

"But I wasn't finished," I protest. "How often do you have seizures?"

"Too fucking bad. Where have you been?" She glares and I frown back, unappeased. "Not often," she relents after a pause. "Only when my brain chemistry gets fucked up. Like in labour."

I know she had a seizure while she gave birth to her daughter but I don't say so. I imagine admitting that I visited her and saw her baby even before she did, and didn't reveal myself, wouldn't go down well right now.

"I've been in different places," I say, giving in only a little, "but I can't tell you anything else. It's not safe for you to know."

She scoffs. "Bullshit. Since when has that concerned you?"

"Since, oh, forever," I counter, shrugging irritably at her. "Since our dad and a crazy psychiatrist wrote a Code for me to live by to keep you from knowing things that weren't safe for you to know."

Deb rolls her eyes. How could I think I'd lost her? She's very obviously still herself.

"The adrenaline injector _was_ for Justice," she confirms begrudgingly. "Everyone who has her has one."

"What's she allergic to?" I ask, and I'm already saying, "No – don't worry, don't answer that." But Deb is laughing bitterly at my question and either ignores or doesn't hear my amendment.

"The whole fucking _world_ , as far as I can tell," she answers. "Bees and insects, dust and pollen, dairy. Nuts. Keeping her alive is a fucking mission I wasn't prepared for."

But I can hear in her voice that it's a mission she chooses to accept and will continue to accept every day for the rest of her life. It's why she's out here tonight. For my son and for her daughter, and their future.

It's a consolation. She didn't kill Matthews for me, out of misplaced revenge. That would be even more tragic than tonight has already become. I can't imagine how she would explain this to her rational self if her only excuse was that she'd thought he killed me.

"My turn," she says. "How did you know where I would be tonight? How were you there to see what went down with Matthews?"

"I was watching Lumen's emails," I admit. "I thought _she_ was the one I needed to worry about."

My sister rolls her eyes. I see my son in the gesture and remember the frequency with which I noticed similar expressions and habits in the pair of them back when we were a family. Now Harrison lives with Deb as her child. They see each other hours of every day. How similar are they now?

" _She_ was very happy to help, I'll have you know," Deb replies, "but _she_ didn't have a wolf in a grandparent's pyjamas manipulating her fucking family. _Her_ kid is safe and sound. Speaking of which," she adds coolly, "I think you owe someone a fuck-tonne of child support."

" _Her_ kid?" I repeat, surprised, but catch myself. "No, wait." I don't want to waste my turn on a question I'm not sure I want the answer to, and besides, I know Lumen wasn't here long so I can assume Deb doesn't have all the information anyway. They're not friends. "That's not my question. Harrison. Is he more like you than ever?"

"You mean, does he intersperse every sentence with 'fuck' and fall in love with inappropriate people? Dex, give him a chance; he's only nine."

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't really," Deb answers coolly. "Is he like me? I don't know _myself_ well enough now to be able to answer that question. He looks like you, and like Rita, sometimes. Like Cody, only fairer. He throws tantrums like Astor." I see him in my mind's eye. I picture him exactly. "No, he doesn't say 'fuck' all the time. I'm the perfect soccer mom, haven't you heard? I think I've dropped more f-bombs tonight with you than I have in the last twelve months put together."

"I definitely don't believe that," I refuse. She smiles wryly at me.

"I don't drink, either, or eat any of the shit I used to live off. Hannah's acid and knife saw to that."

I was going to steer clear of the heavy topics but these 'safe' topics aren't any less confronting.

"I was right to leave you, Deb," I say finally. I raise a defensive hand when she snorts in derision and makes a start towards me. "Don't get mad. It's the truth. I should have done it years before I did."

"Leaving me alone to deal with your fallout was in no way the _right_ thing to do, brother."

"That, no," I agree. "That wasn't fair. The investigation-"

"Not the investigation," Deb interrupts, and I hear hurt behind the anger. "The kids. Matthews. The questions. Cody, wanting your surname. Astor, wanting to believe in a decent father figure. _Harrison_." She closes her eyes and swallows, and I realise that I have no idea the depths of difficulty my son has caused for Deb. My heart twists. What's he been through? What's she had to suffer through with him? She opens her eyes and I'm reassured that nothing she's struggled through for him has fallen short of what she's been willing to do, what she's found herself to be capable of surviving. "And _me_. I wake up every day beside someone too good for me and it kills me that I need him too badly to let him go. I'm a liar, a killer, and I'm sure he knows it but he doesn't care and I don't deserve that kind of love no matter how much I might love him back. I'm not who I thought I was going to be. I have a _baby_ , Dex. A _baby_ ," she says again, and even though she's had Justice for years now I start to understand how unbelievable it still is for her. "No one was around to understand why I didn't want her; no one was around to see why it seemed wrong to mother a child when you've already taken more lives than you're putting back into the world. _You_ should have been there to tell me it would be okay. You're the only one who knows me." She looks straight into me and I feel a chill to know it's still true. "You shouldn't have left me to handle all that by myself."

"I didn't know about the baby," I remind her uselessly. "I couldn't have known. What Hannah did to you… When I found out you were pregnant I couldn't believe-"

"You knew," she accuses sharply. "You've been keeping tabs on me? Spying on me?"

I pause, allow my irritation to settle before answering. "I wouldn't have left under any other arrangement, Deb. Yes, I know about your daughter. Now. But I didn't know when I left that you would ever have her – that she was even an option on the horizon."

"Exactly," Deb says, jumping on her opportunity. "You had no fucking idea. Maybe she's the best fucking thing that ever happened to me, but you left me unconscious in a hospital with a traumatised nephew _who watched you fucking die_ and figured, what? That I'd be _just fine_?!"

My response isn't filtered; it bursts out. "I figured you'd be better off unconscious in a hospital with the traumatised nephew, without me, the brother who put you there, than you would _with_ me, and I figured _he_ would be better off with _you_ than in a fucking _foster home_ , because that was his next stop if Batista had to arrest _you_ for being my accomplice." I frown at her and let this sink in. It's nothing she doesn't already know. "Does my son belong in foster care, Deb?"

She narrows her eyes. "No. He belongs with his fucking family. With me. With my daughter." Her gaze gets sharper. "With _you_."

"Because I've been such a positive influence." I scrub at my face with my hands. "It took me thirty-four years to wreck your life; look what I managed to do to his in only four. He's good with you, isn't he? He's happy… and safe…?"

"He is now," she answers aggressively. She points at the last bag. "Now that I took care of shit you managed to _miss_ on your clean-up of Miami five years ago."

I turn my attention to the last bag of Thomas Matthews. I need more of these details, what he was doing, what he had planned to do, with my son, but for all her insanity I trust Deb's judgement and right now we have _us_ to resolve before we get into other issues.

Deb turns away from me, exasperated. "Shitballs, Dexter! I forgot how easy it is to _hate_ you. I wish I could wind the last few hours back and _unknow_. I wish you hadn't come in tonight. Until you showed up I knew what I was doing. You've fucked _everything_ up. You should have stayed outside."

"And let him kill you?" I venture.

"And just let him kill me. It couldn't be any fucking worse than this, right now."

"It would be for me. You'd be dead." And my son would have lost yet another parent.

"I wouldn't feel like _this_ ," she says bitterly, gesturing vaguely at her chest, where I assume the bitter feeling originates from. "I wouldn't feel… like… like…" She trails off, shaking her head, and when she finally finishes her sentence, it's soft and betrayed. "Like a fucking idiot."

"You're not an idiot."

"Well, thanks," she says sarcastically. "I'm a detective who didn't know her own brother was a serial killer for twenty years, fell in love with him, helped him cover his fuck-ups even though I knew it could only end in blood and tears, thought that meant he really would stay with me forever, and honestly believed he was dead because, hey, if he wasn't, he'd pick up the phone, right? So it's a real weight off my chest to know I'm not an idiot."

I sigh. All I do is hurt her. "Isn't that a sign that I was right? You liked me better dead than you do alive." I look up at her helplessly. "We're all screwed up, Deb. We were only going to run each other into the ground the longer we stayed together."

"I know."

She knows. I run my fingers through the tatty damp ends of my hair. I didn't think I'd ever hear her say that.

"I did so much wrong with you," I say, feeling the familiar twinge in my chest that comes with telling truths like these. "I couldn't fix it all. I had the chance to walk away with the assurance you'd be safe, and I took it."

She still just shakes her head. She can't look at me. I worry she'll cry.

"You're not an idiot," I add gently. "You weren't to know. I made sure."

"How could you?" she whispers. Still not looking at me. "How could you want me at arm's length while I've wanted you right back beside me?"

The hardest question. The honest answer is that not once in all this time have I _wanted_ her at arm's length, but when wants are at odds with other wants, one has to prioritise. "The consolation has been not seeing you cry, not even once, in five years, Deb."

"You missed a lot more than just tears."

"I wouldn't have if I'd stayed."

"I wish I didn't know," she murmurs, gaze fixed on the stars far up above us. "I wish I _was_ still an idiot, just ignorant. Yesterday I missed you. Now I wish you w-weren't here." She finally looks at me. She's breaking. "I hate that I wish you weren't here."

I hate it, too, but it's my own fault that I am here and that she has to deal with the fact that I chose to leave her, so I don't allow myself the luxury of feeling sorry for myself.

"I wish neither of us was here," I say.

"Quinn knows," she says, not a question. The stronger tone is a clear indicator that we are changing subjects, at least momentarily. She's cracking under the weight of the previous topic, and we need another break, another brief distractor. "Doesn't he?"

I wonder if Joey Quinn will be in trouble when he wakes up. "I think he at least suspects. He'd have to. He was used in the cover-up."

"That dirty lying fuck…"

"That dirty lying father of your child?" I rephrase dryly. "He's the only reason I'm alive."

"I know he's the one who found you. I… I heard your message for me." She hesitates. "He's always been vague about that night," she admits.

"He was probably threatened, Deb. Muscled out at least. All I remember was him wrapping my wound and calling the ambulance." Very faintly I recollect telling him things to share with Deb. That I loved her. Did he record those thoughts? "When I woke up he was gone and I was with strangers. These aren't nice people we're talking about. Whatever he knew or suspected, it would have been a risk to you to let you in on it, and he must have known I was never coming back so sharing his suspicions with you wouldn't have achieved anything. Give him a break."

"Oh, God." Deb rakes her hands back through her hair agitatedly. "The fucking coffin. He wanted me to see for myself, because he couldn't fucking tell me. _And I was too chicken-shit to look_!"

I don't know what she's talking about, but I think I just saved Quinn an earful.

"'These people'," Deb repeats now. "Who _are_ we talking about? 'These people' who threatened Joey and made it look like you'd died? When you quite clearly _haven't_."

I ignore that last part. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do."

"Well, I don't want you to."

"Fuck you." There's enough of a hint of venom behind the words to make clear she doesn't mean it affectionately.

"I don't know exactly," I admit. "Dangerous people. The kind of people who liked what they saw in the Bay Harbour Butcher files, let's put it that way." She stares at me with those big eyes. "The kind of people who can make an F.B.I. investigation honed in on your little sister just crumble away into dust." I point a threatening finger at her. "And they can revive it just as easily if that's what they want to do, so just you keep your head down from now on. They know exactly what you are and they're okay with it provided you don't parade it and you look reformed."

She goes quiet, reflective. She leans back on the railing, stretching her arms out along it and twisting her fingers around it. The soft breeze pulls on the loose clothes she's borrowed from me.

"I hate that I wish you weren't here," she says again after some time of staring at the deck, the sky, the water, anything but me. "I only wanted _this_ for so long. For you to not be dead. I wished so hard…" She chokes on a laugh. "Be careful what you wish for, right? To be honest I prefer missing you over knowing you've been living your life without missing me."

It's not true! It's not true. _Of course_ I've missed her, insanely, but I'm trying not to admit to that, because admitting it to her means admitting it to myself, and that's something I try to avoid admitting every single day.

"I prefer you missing me over you knowing I've been alive without you, too," I agree after a moment's struggle. "I would have left it alone; I'd planned to. But I wasn't prepared to let Tom hurt you, and I wasn't prepared to let you go down for this." I gesture at the last bag. "I sacrificed everything I had, everything I loved, everything I was, so you could live this life you're living now. I'm not even Dexter Morgan anymore – I'm no one, somebody new whenever they need me to be. And I'm okay with that. I just wanted you to be happy, Deb, and safe."

She turns away from me, rolling her body along the edge of the boat to face out over the water. She folds her arms on the rail and leans into them. I recognise from the slow reduction of tension in her posture that she's starting to accept it – that my choice, though it hurt her, was most definitely made _for_ her. It's several minutes before she reaches down and lifts the last heavy garbage bag from beside her feet. She hefts it over the side.

"It sucks you've had to fake being dead for five years but it would suck a fuckload more if I went to prison and it was all for nothing, so I'd better not give them any evidence to nail me with," she comments as I haul myself to my feet and stagger across the deck to stand beside her. The water is still black to reflect the night sky and by the time I look there's nothing to say any ugly bag of death ever disturbed its inky smooth surface.

"Like it never happened," I say. I look out across to where the water meets the sky. "They're not going to get you for this." I pause, unsure of whether to say the next words, but they let themselves out without my permission. "I meant it. That I'd never let anything happen to you."

Deb's hand is once again warm compared with the cool ocean breeze when it drifts against mine; after a moment's hesitation she takes it. Her fingers curl around mine. Her thumb runs across my knuckles. I want to look at our joined hands but I don't let myself, in case she pulls away, caught out.

She whispers, "I wish none of this was true. I wish I wasn't out here and none of tonight happened."

"I know."

"Is there the slightest possibility that this is just a nightmare?" she pushes, and I am about to refuse when I look around at our scenario. It's the dead of night. I'm alone on my boat with my sister and we're _alive_ and _together_ and all that happened in the last few hours has been totally improbable and unpredictable, surreal. Is she crazy to still wonder if this is just a dream or am I naïve to insist it can't be?

I'm the psychopath, the little boy from the shipping container, traumatised by horror so intrusive it wrote the script for the rest of my life. My mental health has been more questionable than my sister's for the majority of our lives. I'm unsettled to wonder what qualifies me to judge her sanity and to trust my own perception of reality over hers.

Shit. That's a very scary concept.

"I don't know," I admit weakly. "I suppose there's still a _slight_ possibility we'll both just… wake up… sometime soon."

She swallows. "I don't think I want to. I don't want you to leave."

I give in and I look down at our hands, joined between us, hanging at our sides, and I look back up at her. She looks calm but unsure. Conflicted.

Calm because we've taken care of the immediate problem.

Unsure because she doesn't know the next step. Neither do I, for what it's worth.

Conflicted because as much as she hates that I'm here she loves it, too.

"I wish I hadn't said all that," she whispers. "I wish I never told you I wish you weren't here. You _are_ here," she tightens her fingers and I tighten mine, "and it's what I've wished for every day since you left. I've missed you so fucking much."

I was never meant to come back. I was never meant to tell her all this, either. I was never meant to touch her, speak to her, even _see_ her ever again. I've broken nearly all of my rules tonight. I break another one. I admit it: "Me, too." And another one. I tilt my head up and lean toward her; she dips her head in response so I can kiss her forehead. My lips taste the soft salt of the sea breeze on her skin and the taste of _her_ and I can't pull away. " _So_ fucking much, Deb, every fucking day. You can't possibly know how much."

She stays where she is, enjoying the closeness, the warmth. I inhale her scent with slow, deep breaths. The gentle winds blow the few dry hairs of hers across my face, trying to tickle me, but it's not enough to make me break the contact between my lips and her skin.

"After this," she murmurs, thickly, "you're going to leave again."

No. Never again. "Yes," I confess reluctantly against her skin. It's right. It's for the best. I can only do damage if I stay around, and the tenuous arrangement that keeps her out of prison could come crashing down if it became known that I was hanging about Miami again.

"So take me with you."

It's a simple, hopeful suggestion, and I want to answer _yes, absolutely_ , but I say, "No." I only say it for my son's sake. I should say it for hers, too, and for mine, but it would be a lie to claim that.

"No," she repeats. I close my eyes tightly and hold onto my resolve. Try to block her out. She says only the one word but she assaults all my senses with it. Her scent fills my nostrils. Her taste plays on my lips. Her warmth radiates through my hand and all through the rest of me. Her voice rings in my ears and all I can do is close my eyes and refuse to look at her, because if she pulls away to give me a desperate, appealing look I mightn't be able to look away.

"No," I say again with the same shaky strength. I don't want to say it. I _want_ to take her with me. I _want_ to run away with her like I should have five, six, seven, ten, twenty years ago. I _want_ her, with an intensity I haven't felt since I walked away from her, and she's hard to turn down. But I want Deb and Harrison to have each other and to have the life they deserve, and none of the Morgans will get that if I take Deb.

Deb doesn't argue, which surprises me. She drops my hand and wraps both arms around my middle, snuggling herself close into my chest. Does she feel safe there against me, breathing me in the way I'm breathing her in, ignorant of the rest of the world? I rope one arm tightly across her shoulders and weave the other hand into her damp hair to cradle her head as she starts to cry. I hold her so close, and she hugs me so tightly as she sobs wretchedly with grief, and I know it's my fault, really, all of it. I feel tears escape the corners of my eyes, feel them run into her hair as I lay my cheek on the top of her head, hurting as my overwhelmed Deb cries her heart out into my shirt. She cries for years lost; for mourning misplaced; for a horrifying crime she just committed that she would never have done in her normal, rational state of mind, for disbelief in her own capabilities, all rolling over her in black waves.

"I'm sorry," I breathe into her hair, rocking her gently as we stand there in the cold wind, two hearts breaking together, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

The words don't change anything but I hope she knows they're genuine. I'm sorry I left. I'm sorry for the lie, the betrayal, the cover-up. I'm sorry she's been so alone. I'm sorry she's been too scared of herself to marry Joey and I'm sorry I haven't been there to push her into it, to drag her anxious ass down the aisle. I'm sorry for the state I left my son in when I left him with her. I'm sorry I wasn't there to tell her it was okay to be afraid of being a mother to Justice Rita Quinn but that she would do fine and I'm sorry I wasn't there for that whole emotional journey. I'm sorry I don't have an EpiPen in my glovebox for the safety of the niece I should be around to be an uncle to. I'm sorry I don't know the boy Harrison is growing into. I'm sorry I don't know the adults Rita's children have become.

I'm sorry Deb felt she needed to plan and execute a terrible murder to keep my son safe.

I'm sorry I wasn't there to handle it for her.

I'm sorry I had to interfere and reveal myself to her and shatter her world like I did.

Most of all I'm sorry that she still clearly loves me as completely and as devotedly as I still love her, and I'm sorry we weren't better for each other.

It's the first time I've held her since I carried her from my apartment to the ambulance after Vogel shot her and just like back then, I don't want to let her go. We stay entwined forever, I couldn't say how long. Even when she runs out of tears she stays tight against me.

When she speaks again, her voice is thick and heavy, but not unhappy.

"You remember Astor's birthday? The candles?"

"Ours?" I know Deb never married Quinn, which was the summary of my wish for her, so I'm no longer convinced of the magic of birthday candles, but I still listen. I like hearing her voice.

"Not ours. Yours, kind of. Harrison's."

"What did he wish for?"

"He didn't tell me until that February," Deb tells me softly, voice muffled against my chest. "After it came true." She finally shifts, tilting her head to look up at me. "Justice. He wished for her, Dexter. He wished for a sister, like Cody had Astor and Angel had Jamie and you had me. She came true. And you – you had some fluffy wish about a big back lawn and Harrison playing with some kid of mine I didn't want back then. She's a fucking _wish_. No wonder she's so fucking perfect. Well," Deb corrects herself, "she _wasn't_. She was too early. Broken heart and shit. She nearly died."

" _You_ nearly died," I remind her. I remember clearly, though she probably doesn't. I remember leaving that tiny baby with _Morgan_ on her ankle tag and scouring the hospital halls for the ICU. She wasn't there. _Please, God, not the fucking morgue_. I remember the _swish_ of my borrowed white medical coat as I turned corner after desperate corner, the beat of my footsteps on the floor of those long empty night-time halls, the sweat in my palms as I reflected on how _not okay_ it would be to travel so far _on my freaking birthday_ to find my sister dead and a precious little premature baby with our surname on her ankle alive, and despite already having fallen in love with said baby simply for being Deb's baby being forced to accept that the precious baby of Deb's was the reason Deb was not alive.

Then I remember finding her, and finding her _alive_ , barely, in recovery, and being so damn grateful that I didn't need to blame the baby with _Morgan_ on her ankle.

"She's the whole world, Dexter," my sister shares with me in her soft, reverent voice. "I can't even tell you how fucking incredible she is."

"She changed your life," I say. _Like you and Harrison changed mine_. She nods.

"And Joey's. She's his princess. She's _everyone's_ fucking princess. Harrison…" She smiles fondly. I know without a doubt she was the only person to raise him. Certainly better than me. My son couldn't have done any better than Debra. "You think _I_ was a manipulative sister. She's got your boy all figured out."

I smile at the idea of a bossy baby Debra making demands of my son. Harrison isn't the same as me and I don't know Justice at all but I can easily imagine the scene.

"Maybe they'll do a better job of being siblings than we did," I suggest. Deb's smile falters.

"They're everything," she says. "I know you're mad about what you saw tonight but I don't regret it. Tom needed to be stopped. He was going to fuck up our kids' lives the same way he and Dad and Vogel fucked up ours. And those are _my_ kids. _Our_ kids," she adds fiercely. "He had no fucking right. So I'm not fucking sorry."

"You'd be sorry if he'd killed you," I disagree. She nods once, relenting.

"All I mean," she says, "is that Harrison and Justice were worth that risk and so I took it." She pushes away but keeps her hands on my chest. Feeling my heartbeat? "I would have done the same for you. Still would. But them… I wouldn't have them if you hadn't died. If you hadn't _left_ ," she corrects. Her face is wet from crying. I run my thumbs underneath her eyes to clear some of the tears away. It takes her so long to admit this last part. "I hate you so fucking much for it but you were right to go."

The sky looks paler out to the east. I turn the boat around and drive it back, but I don't rush like I did to get out here. I sit at the wheel and steer, and Deb stands beside me with her hand hooked around the back of my seat to keep herself close and upright. She tells me about Harrison (and Justice – she can't help herself, she's infatuated) and his struggles. About the outbursts at school. About the dog he killed at a barbeque, thinking it was biting his cousin. About Matthews trying to edge Deb out of the role of chief parent and decision-maker. About the tantrum in the bedroom and the watch and the admission that Harrison remembered everything from the last time he and I saw each other.

About Deb's realisation that the man playing grandad to her baby girl had also put a knife into her brother and wouldn't take no for an answer to moulding a new serial killer out of her nephew.

She's breathing a little heavily; it's raw and hurtful. I feel the same discomfort inside me as she recounts the story. I had never envisioned this outcome for my little family. The city's back in view now and I'll have to say goodbye soon. I say, "Tell me something nice. Who does Justice look like?"

"Oh, she's just a mini-me," Deb answers dismissively, not even noticing my subject change. "Not a single strand of DNA from her father." She doesn't say _from Joey_. "Asexual reproduction at its finest. Though she does possess a love for all things pink and frilly that must have come from somewhere other than me."

"Just a recessive gene deep in one of your cells," I tease. She smiles at me and leans her weight into me, looping her arms around one of mine and resting her head on my shoulder. I soak in her warm nearness. How incredible she and I are, the way our cycle can take us from vindictively tearing at each other's hearts to holding each other lovingly close in such a short space of time. The difference for us between hatred and adoration is so slight.

Back at the marina I have her help me wipe the boat down for prints. I ask after Jamie Batista. I'm disappointed to hear she's still confined to a wheelchair.

"We see her every month or so," Deb shares, scrubbing at the deck in the dark. "She takes Harrison for the day. He used to ride on her lap but now he's too big. He can push her now." She pauses and looks up at me. "He's tall, like you were at that age."

I glance up at my old apartment – Astor's apartment – as we pass it on our way back to the car, wistful. Part of me wants to go and knock on the door and wake up my daughter and have them all back. Debra. Harrison. Astor. Cody. Jamie. Angel. Even Quinn, who wouldn't let me die, who refused to accept he'd have to inform Deb he'd lost me, who has selflessly protected and loved my family in my stead, especially if he comes part-and-parcel with this amazing little soul called Justice that Deb's raving about. But Deb gets into the passenger seat, oblivious, and I reluctantly get in beside her and start the car. I drive away.

I already walked away. I can't just come back. Deb, my Deb, she can handle it. She can handle _me_. But no one else can. No one else could ever handle the complication that is having me embedded fully in their lives, in all my raw and honest glory.

Back at Elk Street, we circle until we find Matthews' car. He hid it further away than Deb or I did. He also left the key in the ignition. I suggest to Deb we leave it. This is a dodgy neighbourhood. Someone scummy is sure to notice an expensive unattended car, and that scummy person will be most delighted to find the key and a half-tank of gas.

Deb drives herself home and I follow in my car. It's her idea. I think she doesn't want me to go yet, and I think she wants to let me know where she lives so I know where to find her in future, should I change my mind.

She parks her car in her driveway and slips back to the street to where I'm parked out front. It's a nice house, similar to where she and I grew up. I like that this is where my son and her daughter are growing up. I like that they're growing up with her for a mother – she who would do anything for them, even at the expense of her own sanity and happiness. I like that the biggest threat to their collective familial happiness has been taken care of and I like that they'll all wake up in a couple of hours none the wiser.

Deb leans on my car door, forearms resting on the wound-down window.

"If you're ever back in Miami," she says, "my couch folds out. And Joey's forgiven you for totalling his car."

I lightly tap her hand. "Give that watch back to Harrison. But for God's sake, wash it first. And get rid of those clothes. And change the padding on that neck – change it to a Band-Aid, something inconspicuous. And have a shower."

"There's no way I smell worse than you, fucknose," she argues instantly, though she sniffs her shoulder experimentally. She eyes my beard critically. "You look like a fucking hobo. Have a shave when you get home, wherever the fuck that is these days."

"I'll sanitise these," I say, reaching into the backseat to find the knife and gloves. "I'll get them back to you in a few weeks once the investigation has laid off you and you can put them back in Evidence where you found them. Your place," I add, looking past her at her home, "is going to be turned upside down. There can't be anything here for them to find. You're one of his closest associates, aren't you?"

Deb hangs inside my window, deflates slightly at the reminder. "I'm like his daughter. Justice calls him Grandad. She _did_ ," she corrects. She's quiet for a moment. "He took care of me after you… died. He wanted to be the one who told me. He didn't want me to hear about you from anybody else." She struggles a bit. "I saw his face tonight – he really thought he'd killed you. He killed you and he was taking care of your family."

She says she doesn't regret what she did but she does. But I don't feel any satisfaction this time. She's right – it had to be done. It should have been me to do it, but Tom Matthews needed to go.

"Nobody will know," I assure her gently. "You're going to be okay, Deb. I promise." I catch her face in my hands before she can pull away and go back into the house. "Deb – what you did tonight, to Tom. It was the right thing to do. The only thing. But don't you ever do it again. Don't do it to yourself again; don't put yourself out there like that. Swear to me."

She gazes at me with the kind of intensity that has seen us make out on the odd occasion. We're a screwed-up pair. But when we're even, like we are right now, I wouldn't have it any other way.

"I can't promise that," she answers, disappointing me. "I can't promise that unless you promise you'll be there to do it for me. If the need arises."

I know I should say no, because I should never come back here, to her, and the least I should be able to do for her after the destruction I've caused tonight is to get out and stay out, but now that my secret's out to her I can't promise to stay away. In a normal life there should be no occasion when the need arises to kill somebody and hide their body, but Deb's life isn't as normal as I would like. She's living in the aftermath of _me_ , and the repercussions and aftershocks of being my sister and raising my son will ripple through her world for always, opening up sinkholes and volcanic crevices under her feet when she least expects it.

"I'll send you a phone when I bring back the knife. For _emergencies_ ," I'm firm in adding when her eyes light up, " _if_ anything happens. Don't expect me to show up for coffee."

"People would see you," she acknowledges. "I understand. Thank you." She sighs slowly and relaxes all over, accepting that I'm alive, that I'll be within reach in moments of desperation, that anything the other Dexter she sees and hears from and takes bad advice from tries to tell her can now be discounted as insanity knocking, that she survived the night, that the sun is still rising and the world is still soldiering on even though everything in it is different than what it was yesterday. I start to accept it, too. She and I… we might be okay. "Then I promise I won't do it again."

God, I love her.

Her eyes flicker away to glance at my mouth, and I try to push her away but she grabs my hands on her face and holds them there.

"Don't kiss me," I insist.

"Why not?" she asks. Eyes not returning to mine. Staying on my lips. Breaths deepening. "Is someone watching?"

"No. But I don't deserve it."

Our whole relationship was tainted by the concept of _deserve_. I didn't deserve her. She deserved better. But we got what we got and neither of us could ever walk away. _Too good_ and _not good enough_ can be just as intoxicating as _perfect_.

Deb considers my argument.

"Neither do I," she reminds me, and she reaches into the car and I lack the will to fight her off as she pulls me close to kiss me hard on the mouth. Her lips touch mine and it's a cosmic collision. I'm already reaching for her, already pushing back to deepen the contact. I'm struck with the same electricity as ever, burning all through me, desperation and hunger urging me to draw her nearer, to thread my fingers through her salty drying hair. Our kiss is hot and intuitive, breathy, the way I remember it, and I gladly poison myself on her hot exhalations. She's my sister and I've hurt her so badly and this shouldn't feel as right as it does but there's so much wrong about us that this has often seemed like the least of our indiscretions.

She tastes like boundaries broken and lines crossed and apologies accepted and love so deep it's also hate. She tastes like coming back to life. She tastes like it's been too long since I last drank in the light of her presence and she tastes like this shouldn't be the last time but very well could be.

It's a good thing she breaks away because I mightn't have bothered.

"Christ, Deb," I mutter. "Maybe you _should_ come with me."

She lingers in the frame of my open window and I see the shadow of my brother dance behind her eyes as she considers it. But it's only an instant before she pushes away from the car, touching her soft smile with her fingertips as though confirming the kiss. She backs across the silent street towards her house without saying goodbye. I don't call any sort of farewell to her, either. This parting is not goodbye. How can it be goodbye if I'm not even sure it's happening? It's indistinct the way no other parting has ever been. When I died it was meant to be goodbye, and here I am, lips still tingling with the afterglow of her kiss. Now as she turns to walk up the steps of her front porch and I restart my car, it could easily be the last time we ever see each other, but I still refuse to say goodbye.

It ends like all of my other dreams, watching her drift further and further away. I watch her open the door; I watch her close it behind her; I watch her glance out the window to check I'm still there. My eyes catch hers one last time – hazel, so similar in colour to mine that we might have honestly been related – and then she's gone, successfully released back into her home environment.


End file.
